Reverends & Revenants
by IDespiseTragedy
Summary: The interference from an aguano saved a little boy from the undead's bite and triggered his change into a demon-slayer.
1. Encounter

Title: **Reverends & Revenants**

Disclaimer: _Katekyo Hitman Reborn! _is not mine, you know.

Warnings: You are about to read a horror AU, so expect loads of OCs, mainly for killing purposes. That being said, this story may … uh, prove disturbing in more ways than one. I apologise in advance for little Hibari's OOC-ness in this chapter; given the circumstances he was in, it would be improper if he behaved as coolly as his older canon self. _  
_

Credits: Thank you so much _Ereshkigaal _& _Francesca Kingston _for beta reading & _Piisa_ for the Italian translation.

Author's Notes: I use British English for this particular fanfic (hence, 'enquired' instead of 'inquired' and single quotation marks for standard speech).

A very happy birthday to you, dearest _jusrecht_; enjoy your presen_t_!

_Kamagong (Diospyros blancoi)_ = a plant of the genus of ebony trees and persimmons; its fruit is known as _Mabolo_ or Velvet Apple

_Nikujaga _= beef, potatoes and onion stewed in sweetened soy sauce, sometimes with additional carrots and _shirataki_ noodles (thin, translucent Japanese noodles made from devil's tongue yam)

* * *

It had begun with a game, as harmless as any ostentatious display of bravado among seven-year-old boys could be. Who was to be blamed? His father? The boy would have been playing video games in his comfortable room in Tokyo right now had his father not been relocated as a supervisor to a nickel mine in a small Filipino countryside. His mother? Had she not urged him to make friends with the local kids, he would have probably been reading his Pet Encyclopaedia for the twentieth time that month, since the huge gap in facilities between a Japanese metropolis and a Filipino village left him with no better option for entertainment. The rural Pinoy children? Well, had they not been such braggarts, there would have never been any need to prove his courage through an escapade. Yet, in the end, it was him who had chosen that precise night to give in to their taunts.

The rumoured haunted mansion, with its imposing fence, disfigured gargoyle statues, broken chandeliers, ominous grandfather clocks and creaky doors, turned out to be an ordinary deserted dwelling that hosted many spider webs, but not a single loitering ghost. It was through the supposedly woodland shortcut on the way home that the thievish night snatched the younglings from the prospect of ever seeing their kith and kin again.

Beneath the moonless sky, where night had buried the earth in shades, where profound gloom had swallowed sounds from the nocturnal birds, the chase went on. Only two out of five boys remained, their sweat-dampened shirts clung to the skin of their backs—the skin that soon might no longer feel pain or comfort. No matter how ragged their breath had become, no matter how their stomachs protested too much running, their sore feet never slackened for a moment.

Twisted by the yawning wind, a high-pitched shrill voice traversed through the canopy of the trees. For a few seconds, the helpless squeal seemed to follow Hibari Kyouya, but then it faded. It would have given him goose bumps had he not heard similar hollers three times prior on that single night. A speck of hesitation flickered to life in the boy's mind, almost compelling him to turn back.

Then, another voice reverberated inside his head. It was a more familiar voice. His own. _What can you do? Can you defeat those things—whatever they are—and save Danilo?_

Not daring to take even the slightest glimpse of what befell his friend, Hibari spurred his feet forward. Now that the fourth of his companions had fallen too, it felt like the slim chance for his survival grew even slimmer; he was lost on an unknown territory, encased in infrangible darkness, with nobody to protect him. The Japanese boy almost glanced over his shoulder, but managed to refrain from doing so at the last moment; he didn't want to see his pursuers narrowing the distance between them. He, and the other three Filipino boys—when they had been alive some twenty minutes ago—had the appalling opportunity to witness their friend's disembowelment.

###

After their fruitless exploration of the abandoned mansion, Efren, the fattest of the five boys, claimed that he was hungry and his rumbling stomach verified his words.

'It'll be faster if we go back through the woods,' suggested Danilo, as he pointed towards the dense foliage to the left.

Hesitation clouded Efren's chubby face as his glimpsed the cluster of tall trees. He would rather not get punished by his parents if they were ever to find out. 'But my parents told me not to go there by night no matter what.'

Bayanai tapped Efren's shoulder in an assuring manner. 'So do my parents. But hey, what they don't know, they can't get angry about, right?'

Makisig, the tallest boy, agreed with Bayanai. 'Yeah, my dad's pretty scary when he gets angry. Mum will stop her cooking and my sis will stop talking on the phone whenever dad has both hands on his hips.'

Danilo supported him keenly. 'You know, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near my dad when he gets drunk and still has his belt. Last month, he broke eight plates and three cups with it.'

'Oh, that's nothing,' said Efren, his mood brightening considerably at the prospect for the second dinner that night, 'My _mum_ can hold up a truck with one hand.'

'REALLY?' exclaimed the other three Filipino boys simultaneously. Even Hibari who had always been so reserved in conversation, cocked his head on Efren's account.

'What the…' Makisig swallowed. 'Just how strong is she?'

'Well, she's a traffic officer,' answered Efren with a smug grin, and the other three Pinoys booed him. Hibari resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

The native boys did not bother to ask Hibari's part; the Japanese boy's limited knowledge in Tagalog, Spanish and English often necessitated him to pause too long whilst searching for the correct term to verbalise. Not that this foreigner displayed any zeal in conversing, anyway.

They were walking among the thickness of bushes when Bayanai said he needed a pee and ran behind a large _Kamagong_ tree.

While waiting, Makisig first noted a strange, unpleasant odour. 'Phooey, your fart smells like rotten fish, Bayanai!'

'I didn't fart,' replied the curly-haired boy from behind the tree.

'Then who did?'

Bayanai reappeared from behind the corpulent tree, walking towards his friends while still zipping his pants. 'Dunno, but the smell's pretty nasty over here too.'

After just two steps, Bayanai stopped. 'My tummy hurts.'

'Hey, hey, don't tell us you also need—' Makisig did not finished his sentence; his eyebrow raised in terror, his attention transfixed on Bayanai's stomach. It was moving. Bulging. Erupting.

Bayanai lasted long enough only to dilate his pupils in shock and agony as his liver came out of his body, grasped by a claw-like mottled hand. He could see his blood dribbling from five long, black nails that perforated his skin. Yet, there was no time to turn and face the attacker behind him; he had fallen, never to rise again, before he finished his first—and last—shriek.

Darkness, which came from the deeper shadows inside the woods, concealed most of the features of Bayanai's murderer, though not its adult-sized height. The other four boys scrammed, their little feet springing from the ground. Not even when Mr Uytengsu had caught them stealing the mangoes from his tree did the boys ever run this frantic. The thing, the creature, the horrendous monster, did not pursue them, but enjoyed its spoil, tearing Bayanai from limb to limb. Armed with its double rows of pointed teeth and its talon-like fingers, it gnawed its prey, the dead boy's bloody leg dangling from its mouth.

There were other ghoulish apparitions, however, who were eager for the remaining trophies. It was impossible to tell these beasts' exact number in this ailing light. Starting from Efren, who ran slowest, the fleeing children fell into the hunters' claws within only a few minutes' intervals—under a tree, on the woodland clearing or by a stream. When each boy's cry sliced through the benighted air, his surviving companions dared not turn back. Against such monsters, friendship was not treasured over safety.

One by one, the screams were no more.

###

_Faster!_ _Faster!_ Hibari willed himself. He had been straining his eyes for several minutes now. It was not easy to find his way under the melanite firmament, but Efren and Danilo had been the only ones who brought the flashlights. More sweat drenched Hibari's forehead and dripped from his chin, but his fright eclipsed his exhaustion. A lone prey against a pack of predators, how many more minutes—or seconds—could he survive?

Just as the little boy decided to dismiss this discomforting question, he could not get rid of his consciousness for the rustles in the undergrowth behind and the throaty breathing and flapping garments that kept following him. The knowledge chilled him despite the mugginess of tonight's weather. The wind sounded much like angry voices, berating him on why he had taken his friends' challenge to go through the woods even though their parents had strictly forbidden it. Hibari tried to focus his mind to the urgency of reaching home, where he had always been safe, where adults would be there to protect him…

But what lay ahead was the numerous gargantuan trees on the treacherous morass that separated him from his parents' house.

Speeding through the dark, Hibari continued to rake through the leaves on the forest floor with his slapdash steps. The foliage stirred under the touch of a groaning wind, and the gaunt shadows they cast appeared as monsters swaying their odd-shaped limbs to seize him. As he ducked to pass beneath a low-hanging tree branch, something snagged on his collar. His heart leapt into his throat as steely hooked nails curled, grasping the fabric into a fist. Something slimy and noisome dripped on his nape. His ears caught a snicker; it was the husky, unruly kind of closed cackles that haunted the core of his soul.

Pulling as hard as his seven-year-old arms could, Hibari tried to detach a twig from the tree branch. The monster's head was getting closer; its breath puffing hot against his nape. Never before had he smelt anything so noxious. From this distance, the foul stench of decay presaged his death, clutching the air around him and not letting go.

If only the damn twig would snap!

Something sharp grazed his skin. Hibari told himself that the pain came from the frictions of his fingers while plucking the twig off its bough. Even so, deep down, he knew that the sudden needle-prick pain came from his neck, where the abhorrent monster's teeth had pierced him.

The twig came off at last. Hibari held it tight with both hands and, swivelling his body, he thrust it with all his might, stabbing it into his pursuer's eye. Although trembling, he pushed with all his weight and did not stop until he heard a ripping sound as the stick penetrated the creature's membrane and tore the soft tissue inside. Fortunately for him, the abomination of a monster was bending while trying to catch him; otherwise, the child's height would have disallowed him to reach his opponent's vulnerable eye socket.

From this position, the beast's full features were visible, in spite of the dim light. Never had the child gazed upon so grotesque a visage as this living horror which was the busaw. The creature was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tautly over its bones and its jaundiced eyes pushed back deep into their sockets. Ruts and blemishes and deep-etched wrinkles had ravaged its entire body.

A yelp followed. And blood. Black blood that emitted a strong odour of both suppuration and decomposition. But what mattered to Hibari was the grip of the monster's skeletal claw loosening, which thus created an opportunity to wrench himself away from it.

Hands refusing to cease shivering from guilt and fright, the little boy advanced. He was thinking that he could leave behind the ghoulish form that casted him an accusatory look when circumstances forced him to halt. Dropping from the banyan trees ahead, three more monsters—three other fiendish creatures that bore the same ash-grey complexion of death—landed in front of him and bared their blackened teeth.

Hibari's eyes glazed with fear. In his mind, he screamed, _mum, dad, help!_

But his parents were not there for him.

The boy veered diagonally to the left and stumbled onwards with no idea where this direction was leading. Anywhere, anywhere would be fine, as long as it got him away from here, away from their terror. Darkness seemed to press against him, as if trying to climb inside his body. From behind. From below. From the sides. From everywhere.

Hibari thrashed through the undergrowth, relentless twigs flogging his passing figure, clinging to his clothes, refusing to let him move forward without obstacles. The little boy sped forward, never stopping and not even once looking back at the accursed woodland that made his friends pay their passage fee in blood. He pushed by leafy barriers, scrambled over rocks and tree roots, toiling through the duskiness until at last, at long last, he recognised a path hewn through the undergrowth.

There were gaps in the trees ahead, the lighter greys of open space. In the scanty light, his eyes made out the broad, somewhat rectangular silhouette of banana leaves with their overhanging tiered fruits wrapped in plastic bags. He could liken it to nothing else, though he could not recall ever having seen plants moving in the absence of the wind. He was getting closer to the residential settlement. He was going to be safe.

Unbeknownst to him, trees, particularly dense banana trees, were the favourite lurking place for _mga_ _busaw_.

Panic, haste and pumping adrenaline complicated his arduous breathing. Behind him, the sound of several more footsteps joined the hunt. Adults' heavy strides were closing in. He heard the first pair of feet shuffling, followed by the second, then a third, and fourth, then … he was too terrified to register more. It was as though those taunting noises had kept on rubbing every spot of his exposed skin—his face, neck, hands and legs. He had to find refuge. Quickly.

The farther Hibari advanced, the more the predators' number seemed to grow. The little boy nearly cried out of desperation; the pain on his neck was prickling, beseeching him to rest. True, he had been selected as a sprinter to represent his class during sports events for two years in a row, but even such a healthy child had limits for physical endurance. His lungs had been burning for a while now and his leg muscles were at the verge of cramping. A sharp pain jolted through his ribs. Even as he wheezed, his heart felt frozen inside his chest. But he knew that if he stopped, if he tripped or paused for whatever reason, he would meet his end. The undead would not cease hunting him. Not until their hunger was sated.

Trickles of sweat dripped from the boy's brow, and would have stung his eye had he not shut its lid in time. He wiped the sweat. His nostrils flared; somewhere during his panting, he had even been breathing through his mouth. What made him deserve this battle of wills between pursuers and prey? How long must he continue to run? Why hadn't any of those monsters caught him? They were adult in vigour and copious in number; surely it would be more than feasible for them to overtake a child's speed.

Then, he remembered. Last week, he had seen a cat torturing a cockroach. Rather than eating the insect straight away, the cat flipped it bottom side up, and then, holding the smaller animal by one antenna, the conqueror wiggled its claws so that they hovered directly the captive's belly. The cockroach struggled vehemently, its tenuous wings flapping about and its spindly legs kicking empty air, but the minutes dragged on until the prey witnessed the lower half of its body disappearing into the feline maw.

Hibari's pupils dilated at the fresh jog of memory. His pursuers were not incapable of catching him; they did not want to—not yet. They were _playing_ with their food.

The coal-black sombreness of the starless firmament blinded the boy from the trench ahead. His body rolled freely—too freely for comfort—and after a number of thuds, it landed at the bottom of the pit. For the first few seconds, his sensory nerves felt numb, but the agony gradually flooded over his adrenaline rush. The contact between his skin and the sandy flagstone slope had left him with several bruises that were now tormenting him like searing hot fires that erupted from several places of his body. A portion of his ribs, upper back and chest hurt. His left elbow had suffered inordinately from the crash against the mudsill. Nevertheless, none of the damages he had undergone was as excruciating as the pain in his right knee.

The trench, which sloped higher than an average grown-up man, was connected to a tunnel adit at its far end. Hibari inwardly cursed the existence of a trench in such a place, but come to think of it, his father had indeed mentioned that the nickel mine where he worked was located somewhere in the forest clearing. Wincing, the little boy bit his lip, preventing himself from giving forth a whimper—it took all his willpower to restrain the urge to cry. No matter how much his muscles screamed, his mouth was shut tight. The pleasure of watching him struggling in pain would _not_belong to his enemy.

He needed to get up. He had to. But it was too agonising even just to move.

Through the blur of the rheum gathering in his eyes, Hibari perceived more than half a dozen monsters landing before him; each leapt from the rocky slope like a starving beast from the high ledge. In spite of his vision inadequacy, their malodour was unmistakable. The reek crept over the skin of his face, his neck; it crawled down his throat and coagulated foetidly in his lungs.

Hibari pressed his back harder against the acclivitous flagstone. While the insentient slope would not move, the child's heart pounded erratically and each breath brought him fresh jabs of pain. Raspy snarls resonated in the darkness a few steps in front of him. There was no way out. The predators stepped forward—a privilege for the victors of the game to claim their award. His chest rose and fell heavily as their tawdry footsteps were confining him in a circle.

The boy's quivering fingers fumbled, searching desperately for something he could use to defend himself—anything was better than nothing. He managed to find a rock and, as he lifted it, a new shock of horror permeated his pores. The lump he was holding was much lighter than a bowling ball-sized rock was supposed to be. It was hollow and graced with five holes of dissimilar size: Two for the eye sockets, one for the nose, one for the mouth and one for the neck. A skull. Here and there in the pit, the remains of what used to be humans lay tumbled; some were still in the form of partially flayed flesh, others had been reduced to bones. The overwhelming smell of decay from his pursuers had made him neglect another odour of similar nature.

Eyes wide with dread and repulsion, Hibari scuttled backward; he had just realised that the object inches away from his foot was none other than the part of a blood-spattered little finger. Not far from it, the veins from a severed limb dangled like the frayed wires from a cut off electrical cord. Thanks to the cover of dimness and the dispersal of distance, the details of many other entrails were hardly distinguishable. However, the foul reek of these corpses and of the infernal beasts amalgamated into a ghastly perfume in the night air.

_How long have these monsters preyed on people,_ thought Hibari through unmitigated poltroonery. One of the reasons for his father's nomination as the mine's supervisor was because the locals had been unable to offer plausible explanations about how and why the labourers had gone missing. Shortly after his arrival at the Philippines, three weeks prior, his new schoolmates had teased him that he and his family would soon fall prey to the mga Busaw. According to them, mga busaw were people who rose from their graves, and, condemned to shades and dirt, they stole corpses for consumption, but when there were no more corpses available, they would mortally wound the living and feast upon the newly-made corpses. Back then, Hibari had overlooked the notion as a poor attempt to scare him; to them, he must have been nothing but a pampered city boy who had barely been able to speak Tagalog or Spanish. Only now did he discern how much truth resided in those local children's words.

Cold sweat broke down Hibari's temple; the circle of predators was getting smaller and smaller. Casting his revulsion aside, the little boy retrieved the skull he had previously dropped. He gripped the skull so hard that his knuckles went white; the skull's derelict eyes seemed to stare at him in dismay. The child swung it as hard as his injured body permitted him to. Height limitation made him incapable of aiming higher than his opponent's ribs; still, he strove to connect his hit with the nearest monster.

When a sharp crack split the air, Hibari knew his strategy had gone awry. The skull—his only weapon—shattered; his enemy was unharmed. The child's breath hitched once more. The busaw's mouth quirked upwards, only to slide open to a grin, revealing rows of thin, sharp teeth. Something slithered out of the foul-smelling cavern of the ghoul's mouth. So long was the tongue that, in this dimness of the night, Hibari almost mistook it for a big fat worm.

_Move!_ The child's mind commanded his body; yet, his muscles, nerves and sinews disobeyed him. It was a wonder that until minutes ago, his legs had carried him for at least three quarters of a mile, but now he was rendered immobile. The underdeveloped tendons in his neck and face stood out, taut with dread. He began to shake, his teeth clattering together. The fetter of fear had bound his whole being.

The busaw knelt before the child. It sniffed around him, its squashed-up nose inhaling deeply, relishing the fresh scent of the living. Next, it bared its black, fang-like teeth and let its long tongue leisurely caress the boy's throat. Hibari clenched his jaw; discounting its slime, the tongue was no less rough than sandpaper. The other mga busaw moved closer. Some of them must have been the ones who had assaulted his friends; blood splattered their ashen integument and bits of freshly-flayed skin and pieces of garments hung from their nails. The rustles of their movements were accompanied by sinister hissing—hoarse and booming—that echoed through the flagstone trench. Keen as vultures swooping down at the sight of carrion, the hordes of them swarmed about the trench in full prospect of feasting upon the soon-to-be fallen child.

A long pair of sinewy, pernicious arms thrust forward, and Hibari instinctively shut his eyes. A part of him wanted to believe that if he couldn't see any of these fiends, none of them could see him either. His wishful thinking was dismissed the moment pain ripped through his flesh. The nearest busaw's claw-like fingers descended to the little boy's stomach, each effortlessly tore into the child's body. Pain jolted through him, electrifying his raw nerve endings. It was a different pain from the ones induced by his bruises, different sort of horror—at least, he knew he'd be able to walk in a few days' time after falling from a tree or a bicycle, but there was no guarantee he'd survive when the tip of the busaw's flagitious nails scraped so dangerously close to his bowels. As the fiend's long, black nails were flaying through his flesh, blood dripped from his wound in red threads, splotching his white shirt with dark stains.

Without preamble, the cumbersome atmosphere dropped. A breeze whooshed past them, mystifying and mild. A new scent was palpable in the air. It held the sharp tang of ozone, fresh as spring water and fulminant as the cold hand of death. Hibari felt it ripple through his body, its touch gentle and its grip absolute.

The next thing Hibari knew, five of the monster heads were sent flying. Their bodies were moving violently, like fish thrashing about in a net, but then, as fire consumed their decayed flesh, they gradually lost their speed and sense of direction and fell to black soil of earth. The remaining mga busaw turned to face the newly arrived being, for, unknown to Hibari, they had sensed the presence of furtive danger even before it had revealed itself.

Amidst the darkness that continued to swirl like a dense mist, strange flames danced. The golden radiance rippled up and down, twirling and springing, and soon became fast moving blurs. It was a dance of death that ended before the minute even lapsed away, a _danse macabre_ that left the ghouls' destroyed bodies scattered like dried leaves in autumn. Yet, in that brief moment, the little boy witnessed something that haunted him for the rest of his tomorrows.

Only in the stillness that followed did Hibari realise the source of the flames. The trail of flames that flecked the mga busaw's disjointed bodies all led to one place. On the opposite side of the trench, someone—no, _something_ that had parts of human's features—stood so still, almost like a statue, bar the billowing of its long overcoat that seemed out of place for Philippines' tropical climate. Its lower part consisted of four equine legs and hindquarter. Nestling in its hand was a whip of which serpentine body flaring with the golden flame that died down seconds later. Albeit the murky half-light of the sullen sky thwarted the child from studying the creature's age and gender, the pale, faint phosphorescence that radiated from the mysterious being was irrefutable. A pair of eyes glowed ember-like in the dark, peering down at the boy.

Hibari shuddered. The mga busaw, who had relentlessly hounded him, were immensely frightening, but this … this was beyond even those. Night was soundless, night was wakeless—just like the silent stare of the preternatural entity before him.

Pale with fear, the boy held his breath as the creature began to stride towards him. He would stand no chance against such an invincible being, but there was no way he would become the new monster's food without resistance. He ran sideways, and doing so reopened the gash in his knee. Fresh blood streamed down his shin, but his labour bore fruit. His feet stumbled upon a long object. A bone. A femur covered in dust and dry blood.

Heartbeat throbbing inside his head, Hibari clutched the femur with both hands. At first, he wielded like a sword, but then, noticing how blunt the ends of the bone were, he changed it into a baseball bat grip. Not even his hardest swing would knock out the formidable opponent—he knew that; his teeth wouldn't cease chattering and his body wouldn't stop quivering. Yet, he was also aware that a further attempt to escape would be futile. The pain on his right knee was aggravated from running just now. His blood loss had started to take effect, dizzying and enervating him. If he were to meet his end here, why shouldn't he die fighting?

The noctilucent creature came over to the child's side, its steps the sound of a horse's gallops.

Hibari charged, but his footing was too wobbly to support his impetuosity. After just seconds of tottering, his strength gave away. His makeshift weapon flew vertiginously a few steps ahead. All the exhaustion that had been building up inside him exploded at one precise moment. Immobility settled over him like a ponderous, irremovable blanket.

In the haze of his fatigue, Hibari wondered why his body did not fall onto the ground. Then, he felt a pair of hands suspending him from the back. The fingers were rougher and thicker than a busaw's, and unlike theirs, these nails were short and blunt.

Hibari turned his head sideways. The one who was holding him was a non-human creature, its complexion sable as the soil below and its height exceeding his own by a mere few centimetres. The little boy blinked and his eyes made out the shape of spectacles flanking the creature's hawk nose as well as the moustache underneath it. The most prominent feature of all, however, was the creature's wide, flabby ears.

Hibari blinked again. This creature reminded him too much on the goblins depicted in children's books. But did goblins really wear spectacles? And since when had it come? He could not even be sure if the tellurian goblin had been there all along or had just surfaced from underground. The boy tried to move his arm, to offer any kind of resistance, but felt too weak even to wiggle a finger. Numbness was creeping through him like a contagion, spreading from to each and every vein.

'Calm down. We will not eat you,' the goblin spoke in strangely-accented Tagalog, its voice deep and guttural, but benign.

_We?_

Hibari returned his gaze to the front again. The other creature—the one that had eradicated the mga busaw—was now standing right before him. Fearsome and tall, its looming figure blocked the view of the trench slope and the ebon empyrean from the child.

'_Codesto è stato ferito, Romario._' ('This one has been injured, Romario.')

Hibari did not know what the creature was talking about, nor did he recognise the language. The sound bore some semblance to Spanish, but there were differences. Three weeks of staying in the Philippines did not facilitate him with Spanish proficiency in the first place. All he could tell was the creature's voice was a mellow baritone that seemingly had the power to hold one captive.

The goblin behind Hibari answered,'_Credete che sia stato infettato, mio signore?_' ('Do you think he is affected, my lord?')

The taller figure leaned forward to examine Hibari's ripped stomach more closely, then uttered, '_E' solo un graffio, ma la saliva del demonio potrebbe già aver preso possesso del suo sangue._' ('It's just a graze, but the fiend's spittle might have already entered his bloodstream.')

One of the goblin's hands tightened its grip on Hibari whereas the other drew a pistol from the holster on its hips.'_Allora…_' ('Then…')

Feeling the cold barrel against the side of his head, now Hibari could guess where the conversation was leading. In his mind, he screamed 'NO!' but his faltering courage and tired body disenabled him from bringing the word to the surface. A skylark whose wings had been clipped could not flee from the fangs of a viper.

Nonetheless, the equine man placed his hand on the pistol as a gesture of halting. '_Aspetta, un grande coraggio si trova in questo bambino. Vediamo ciò che il destino deciderà per lui._' ('Wait, a great courage lies within this little boy. Let's see what fate will decide for him.')

Despite the dogged grit of his teeth and the straining glare of his eyes, Hibari could not deny the weakening of his muscles; they relented into the relaxed mode. His will wavered, for his mind was sodden with somnolence. Darkness engulfed the little boy.

The last thing he saw before falling to unconsciousness was the incandescent pair of eyes against the backdrop of obsidian sky.

###

The first thing Hibari was aware of when he woke up was the comfortably cool air; it was nowhere near Philippines' hot and humid climate.

Above, loomed a frescoed ceiling framed by cornices of involute pattern. Its scene depicted a girl of entrancing pulchritude approaching a group of ailing people by a stream, all of which wore tunics. The billowing of the nymph's drapery was in harmony with the river flow, highlighting a sense of mystique within her. The combination of the pastel colours in the painting—especially the riparian nymph's creamy complexion, the aqua marine spring water and the moss-green shrubberies—was an ambience soothing to behold. (It was only a year later, when Hibari had received his mythology lesson could he identify this to be Nymph Juturna emerging from the bank of River Numicius to heal the sick.)

Hibari sat up. He had no recognition of this place. He was laid in a bed lined with white sheets. There were plenty more of such a bed in this room, arranged symmetrically row by row. Of these, only three beds beside his own were occupied. Both occupants must have been deep in slumber, since no sound of movements filled the room. Cupboards for medicinal storage purposes occupied the corner of the room, aligned to a writing desk. He had undoubtedly been lodged in some kind of infirmary, and an extravagant one at that. The far end of the room culminated at a door lavishly inlaid with ivory, akin to those featured in European movies.

When the boy inspected his body, he learnt that all of his wounds had been tended and his blood-covered shirt had been replaced. He was wondering who had nursed him when his ears caught a lively bustle from outside. He craned his neck at the large mullioned window next to his bed.

Hibari's initial thought was that this infirmary belonged to a theme park. Directly below the window was a spacious lawn that was the inner ward of a castle, surrounded by lofty flagstone walls. At one corner, stood an even loftier castle keep. A porch supported by a row of Tuscan columns connected the keep to a round tower. A panoramic garden bedecked with a fountain, wondrous topiary, virid plantation and statues of fabulous beasts from around the world—chimera, roc, naga, jackalope, and many more—abided outside the walls, concluding with a monorail as its outermost border. A lush forest stretched beyond these, subjecting the trees to the castle's majestic domination.

The boy's gaze darted back to the inner ward. There, a mauve-haired Caucasoid woman was demonstrating the basic techniques to free themselves from a monster's grasp to an audience of various ages and ethnicities. She swiped an _ofuda_ paper vertically across her face, read some mantra which he couldn't hear from such a distance, and blew. The ground shook and cracked and erupted to reveal a gargantuan pallid green hand. At her summon, the hand seized her, crushing her slender frame. Some of the watchers screamed hysterically, but she yelled at them to stay calm. Afterwards, she read another mantra, which again Hibari could not hear, and the hand shrunk back into the earth. The pedagogy, however, did not end there. Next, she drew a pair of _kama_and hurled them in the air. The sickles twirled in fast rotation until they slashed through the monster's fingers, and the chopped flesh dropped to the ground. The woman hopped off from the fingerless palm and landed lightly on the ground. She must have told the spectators to try next because they looked so fidgety.

_What a strange taste for theme park entertainment!_

Now Hibari was eager to see the different view that one of the windows on the opposite side of room might offer. It was then that he spotted a pen moving on its own, its tip forming letters in its wake. Unbidden, breath got caught in the little boy's throat. Chill nestled in. He blinked a few times, telling his inner self that either he mistook a totally different object for a moving pen or it really was a pen, but was attached to the ceiling via a very thin string rather than hovering in the air.

When the boy reopened his eyes, the pen was still in motion. However, after a closer look, he discovered the cause of the pen's movements: The medic in charge of the room. She was a woman of African origin, her curly hair tied in a bun. She sat facing the window on the opposite wall, her back facing him. There wouldn't have been anything unusual about her, had it not for her_transparency_. Hibari rubbed his eyes, but he could still see the wooden desk on which the woman was writing a document through her white coat.

_I'd better get out from here as soon as possible_, thought Hibari as he tried to rise from the bed. Nevertheless, the din of his body shifting against the bedframe gave away to his awakened state.

The diaphanous woman turned her head and greeted him in Tagalog, 'Oh, you're awake.' She tugged her pen onto a clipboard and approached the boy, her feet never touching the ground.

Hibari hesitated. He thought of running away, but his soles were sort of rooted to the ground. Also, somehow he felt that this woman meant him no harm. There was no perilous aura around her, unlike the case with the mga busaw.

'Don't worry. I won't harm you. As a matter of fact, I cured you. Not all ghosts are evil—you'll learn that here.' She pulled at the bandage by his stomach, and he could tell the cuts were freshly healed. The woman promptly returned the bandage to its previous condition, and, upon noting how well he seemed to have recovered, her smile widened into a grin.

'How long have I been here?' asked the baffled child; he couldn't help being impressed by the foreigner's linguistic fluency. Several other questions were crowding his mind, but he considered this one most urgent.

'You've been sleeping for…' She consulted her watch. '… over thirty eight hours now, including the one-hour difference between the Philippines and Japan, that is.'

'Japan? I'm in Japan? Did my parents send me here?' Hibari spoke in Japanese this time. A new hope filled him, making his eyes sparkle.

There was a speck of surprise in female ghost's eyes when she discerned the boy's native tongue, but other, far greater, concerns weighed her gaze. She answered him in Japanese, again with an accent so closely resembling that of a native speaker, 'You have been bitten by a busaw; hence, you must be quarantined from ordinary humans for the sake of their safety. In other words, the world no longer acknowledges your existence.'

Hibari's pupils dilated and his voice was shaking as he spoke, 'You mean … I can never see mum and dad again … because I'll turn into one of those monsters?'

The ghost came closer and placed her hand on his cheek; the fingers were cold, but the touch was not unkind. 'It's too soon to tell if you'll become like those who hunted you. There are teeth mark and salivary traces in the cut on your neck. Bodily fluids is one way a person can be infected; however, since the transformation time varies between individuals, we'll have to wait and see what's going to happen within the next few nights.

There's also another way of converting humans into mga busaw, but it can only be accomplished by more veteran mga busaw. They transfigure their victims' flesh into pigs to feed the living human; those who consume these jinxed meats would turn into mga busaw themselves. But, rest assured, young man, even if you transform into a busaw, we'll give you antidotes to keep any monstrosity within the leash. Your schoolmates and the members of staff will become your new family; many of them are victims whose pasts were taken away by monsters. You will study to control your power so as not to attack the innocent, but fight against those who harm humans instead. You will also be educated with several languages to ease your future missions across the globe.'

The more the ghost's words sank in, the more burdened Hibari's mind became. If only he had obeyed his parents, if only he had not gone to explore the desolated mansion, if only the unhallowed, vicious creatures known as 'mga busaw' had not existed…

The ghost continued, 'Our institution is located amidst the desolation of the virgin forests of Hokkaido. Amulets were placed around the school so that neither human eye nor technology—binoculars, cameras, satellites, etc.—could detect its existence.'

Hibari reached for the back of his neck and ran his fingers upon the bandage. One mark that the undead left behind. One bite that left his soul perplexed in greater pain. One wound that destroyed his life.

The ghost blabbered on about the school's security system, but Hibari paid her no heed. He recalled the last fishing trip with his father and the delicious _nikujaga_ that his mother cooked when they got home. He felt something stinging in his eyes and when he rubbed, the back of his hand became wet.

Desperately trying to divert his thought on any topics other than his parents, the boy enquired, 'What about the ones who brought me here?'

'Oh, Dino and Romario? The two of them brought you here because this is the closest Vongola branch from the Philippines. They left as soon as they explained the situation; you're so lucky to have survived from such a mass attack. Dino once came here as an exchange student. Anyway, now he works freelance, so he doesn't drop by on a regular basis. Romario is his loyal assistant.'

'Are they … centaur and goblin?'

'You are correct regarding Romario's identity, but not quite for Dino's. He's an "_aguano_". Like a centaur, an aguano has the torso of a human and the hindquarter of a horse, but while a centaur cannot transmogrify himself into a full man or a full stallion, an aguano can. "_Aguani_" are sprites that inhabit the mountainous land of northern Italy, the Austrian Alps and Slovenia. They are generally friendly, but it is advisable to ask their permission while entering their territory; otherwise, they may attack the trespasser. Even so, "_aguane_"—the female counterparts of aguani—are more widely known to humans.'

With that, the ghost glided away to one of the occupied beds. She studied the label of the infusion pouch next to the sleeping patient and began jotting down some notes on her clipboard.

Hibari fell silent. Now that his curiosity for his saviours' identity had been quenched, his mind returned to the severance of any ties with everyone he had known. He should be glad to stay alive, and yet … to what purpose had he been kept breathing, now that the future's dismal prospects had stowed him in its sable dungeon? He did not even get the chance to say goodbye to his parents. His stock of fish food was running low; what if Seisuke and Himeko—his pet goldfish—were starving? There were also some video games that he had not cleared yet.

And then, there was also Mrs Bautista, who frequently gave the neighbouring children her home-made cupcakes. And good old Mr Tiu, who performed impromptu pantomime for the children's amusement. And then Mr Navarro. And Mr de los Santos. And Mrs Dee. And his classmates. And…

Danilo, Makisig, Efren, Bayanai—not only had their future been robbed and ransacked by the malignant night, but their remnants also lay in the forest and would remain there still, forever unburied, together with the rest of the mga busaw's victims.

'Hey, wipe away that gloom from your face. If you practise diligently, you will be strong like Dino—so formidable that those spawns of hell will cower at the mere sound of your name,' the ghost, who had just returned from the other patient's bed, tried to cheer him up. She also looked like she was going to ruffle Hibari's hair, but he was glad that she didn't. Be it by human or ghost, he didn't like being touched affectionately.

'Speaking of which, I haven't asked your name yet. Mine's Bayo Akiloye. What's yours?'

'Hibari Kyouya,' answered the child as he shook the hand that the ghost had offered. Again, the child felt as though he had been touching a block of ice, but he did not flinch—he reckoned the least he could do was not to offend the one who had helped saving his life.

'Now then, don't think that it's impossible to reach his level, Kyouya-kun. Dino used to be a wimpy pipsqueak when he was small, but he always strove harder than his classmates. As a result, he graduated with _summa cum laude_ honour from the central branch. Naturally, he's often in high demand; in fact, he had just finished a job when he noticed the busaw's presence in that woodland and found you,' continued Dr Akiloye. 'Well, that is to be expected; although he stayed here for a mere three months as an exchange student, Dino remains one of the best disciples Headmaster Reborn has ever had and a living example for exorcists, after all.'

The mention of Dino's accomplishments dissipated Hibari's glassy stare. The mga busaw had robbed him of reasons for living, but this so-called Dino gave him another. He would live, he would become successful and he would obtain Dino's acknowledgement. No, there would come a day when he surpassed this aguano. Notwithstanding its preoccupancy with his saviour, the child's mind registered another concern. _Exorcists?_

'What exactly is this place?' questioned Hibari, his eyes squinting.

The ghost grinned. 'Welcome to Namimori, a.k.a. the Vongola Academy of Exorcism, Asian Branch.'

TO BE CONTINUED

* * *

Preview for the next chapter:

'You're crowding around.'

The words were spoken in a flat tone, yet they bore the speaker's undisguised resentment. At the sound of his voice, the four girls who were chatting merrily stopped their giggles, colour draining from their faces. They separated immediately and each individual paced the remaining length of the corridor with hurried steps; the shortest of them had even mumbled a frantic apology before she scurried away towards the 'Academic Studies' section.

Her remorse was wasted, thoroughly ignored. The one who had reprimanded the girls continued walking towards the opposite direction, under the barrel vault of the corridor, the red 'prefect' band encircling the _gakuran_ sleeve of his right arm swaying lightly with every step he made. No longer was Hibari Kyouya a hapless child, but a youth inured to fear. At sixteen, he had grown into an unspeakably ferocious and competent exorcist-in-training whose obduracy had done considerably to earn him dire obedience from his fellow students, but so little fondness from them.

* * *

Just to clear things up, 'mga busaw' is the plural form of 'busaw'.


	2. Mingling

Credit: Immeasurable thanks to _charlzway_, _DeathDragon130, XTAIGAX _and_ Ereshkigaal _for beta reading

This chapter's warning: Uh, the portrayal of Hibari as a psychopathic antihero and a horde of OCs for more bloodbaths?

* * *

_Nunchaku _= a traditional Okinawan weapon consisting of two sticks connected at one end with a short chain or rope

_Smørrebrød_ = open rye-bread sandwiches, usually laden with slices of cold meat, sausage or hard-boiled egg

_Ichthus / ichthys_ (the Greek word for 'fish'), which is a Christian symbol for Christ, is a depiction of a fish composed with the initials of these five words: _Iesus Christos Theou Uios Soter_ (Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour) and is encircled by the words in full. During the persecution of the early church, this symbol was among those used by Christians as a means of identification and to designate a place of gathering.

_Selkie_ = a mythical Celtic creature who is said to live as a seal in the sea but shed his or her pelt to become human on land

_Vade Retro Satana_ means 'Step back, Satan!' in Latin.

Threnody = a mourning hymn for the dead

Misericorde = a thin-bladed dagger; so called, in the Middle Ages, because used to give the death wound or "mercy" stroke to a heavily-wounded adversary (its Latin derivative, 'miser' / 'wretched' + 'cor' / 'heart' = 'misericordia' / 'compassion')

_Espada ropera_ = a light, thin, ornate sword developed in the mid-fifteenth century Spain

_Creese_ (also spelt as '_kris_' or '_keris_') = a Southeast Asian asymmetrical, wavy-bladed dagger

Here's the full chart of the singular & plural forms for the word 'draug' in Danish:

Singular, without specific article: draug

Plural, without specific article: drauger

Singular, with specific article: draugen

Plural, with specific adjective: draugerne

* * *

'You're crowding around.'

The words were spoken in a flat tone, yet they bore the speaker's undisguised resentment. At the sound of his voice, the four girls who were chatting merrily stopped their giggles, colour draining from their faces. They separated immediately and each individual paced the remaining length of the corridor with hurried steps; the shortest of them had even mumbled a frantic apology before she scurried away towards the 'Academic Studies' section.

Her remorse was wasted, thoroughly ignored. The one who had reprimanded the girls continued walking towards the opposite direction, under the barrel vault of the corridor, the red 'prefect' band encircling the _gakuran_ sleeve of his right arm swaying lightly with every step he made. No longer was Hibari Kyouya a hapless child, but a youth inured to fear. At sixteen, he had grown into an unspeakably ferocious and competent exorcist-in-training whose formidability had done considerably to earn him obedience from his fellow students, but ever so slight fondness from them.

Hibari did not pause until he reached an arched entryway. The entrance opened to reveal the main hall of the Exorcism Studies Section—a circular colonnaded hall of porphyry floor and flanked by two state-of-the-art winding stairs that hosted the palladium parapegm of the Vongola Coat of Arms. The Coat of Arms consisted of a winged clam perched at the intersection of two crossing rifles, from which, hung a shield depicting a single bullet. Crowned by swirling acanthus leaves, a banner inscribed with the 'Vongola' name served as its base.

Ahead of the corridor entry, seven doors graced the hall, each separated by a huge tapestry depicting mythical scenes around the world. The first door on the left was engraved with the picture of a storm symbol. Underneath the icon was the Division Guide: _Mantra, sutra reading, curses, hexes, jinxes, exorcism ceremony, counter-goety, abnegation of necromancy, precautions against the Sigil of Baphomet, etc_. The door on its right was engraved with the picture of a rain symbol and inscribed with _one-on-one duels_ underneath the icon. The next door bore a sun symbol and the Division Guide:_ Recuperation for bites, stings and poisoning by werewolves, zombies, spiders, etc._ A thunder symbol etched the fourth door, which was meant for _Preservation and maintenance of artefacts, talismans, charms, seals, holy water, etc._

The fifth door was engraved with a cloud symbol. This division was for _Fighting against multiple opponents _and was where Hibari belonged. The violet tapestry on its right depicted young Kintaro in his red bib taming a pack of bears beneath the lush trees on Mount Ashigara. However, personally, Hibari preferred the light blue tapestry on the right of the Rain Division, which portrayed the hero Beowulf wrestling the ferocious Grendel with his bare hands under the murky sky.

The engraving on the sixth door was the mist icon; underneath which, were the words: _Exorcism involving mind control, shape-shifting and illusory techniques._ The last door, which was the door on the right of the entrance, was the entrance to the sky division—the most difficult of all, of which duties involved _Dangerous missions for rescuing lost-in-action exorcists._

No access beyond to these doors would be granted to any student who had not passed the placement test. To take the test, it was necessary for students to study six years of fundamental exorcism, in which all subjects of exorcism were obligatory. Unlike the Academic Studies, the Exorcism Studies did not segregate students based on age, but by the length of their stay at the academy. Therefore, it was possible, for instance, for a twelve-year old sixth-year elementary student from the Academic Section and a twenty-one-year old third-year university student from the Academic Section to become classmates as second-year students in Basic Exorcism.

Upon passing the test, students would advance to a more talent-specific level and be allowed to choose the subjects of their interest. The placement test itself consisted of seven parts: Wording Fluency, Battle Obduracy, Restoration Proficiency, Scientific Approach, Stamina Maintenance, Strategic Manipulation and Problem Solving. Students with the highest score for literary studies would naturally join the Storm Section. Those who mastered the intricate way an amulet did its work would earn themselves seats in the Thunder Section, and so forth.

Those who failed the exams at the end of the six years of Basic Exorcism Studies might repeat a grade or move to the Department of Exorcism Support Studies, where they would undergo trainings as Auxiliary Exorcists. Depending on their skills and what their exorcist partners lacked, the graduated exorcist supporters had a wide range of jobs, including, but not limited to, luggage porters, linguistic interpreters, informants, project managers and weapon suppliers.

Furthermore, students under eighteen would receive compulsory academic studies in accordance to the Japanese educational system in addition to their exorcism studies, although mature students were allowed academic studies, as well, should they wish to. The academic studies taught them how to cope with normal jobs, in case a solicitor or a hockey player wanted to be a part-time exorcist.

Hibari went through the door with the cloud symbol. As he passed, an older boy standing at the corner nudged his companion with a meaningful smirk; even so, Hibari proceeded to the male changing room for a uniform switch. The Academic Studies Section employed the gakuran for boys and sailor suits with pleated skirts for girls, while the Exorcism Section employed the same outfit for both genders. The jackets, trousers and boots were optimised for the ease of fighting: High collars and long sleeves for prevention against monster bites made of light-weighted, flameproof, waterproof and bulletproof synthetic fibres enchanted with dwarves' hair. Each button was glazed with the paste of golems' teeth to increase its durability. All uniforms had the same black colour, but to distinguish students by their seniority, the sleeve hems differed in colour for each grade. All uniforms were equipped with the necessary pockets and straps for holding weapons.

As soon as the door opened to reveal Hibari's figure, the bustling liveliness of the male changing room turned into the mortuary silence of a burial ground. All tittle-tattles were snuffed out. Adam's apples bobbed up and down. Breathing hitched. Shoulders stiffened. Each of the fourteen occupiers of the room kept his gaze at his own locker.

The prefect walked past them without a second glance. It did not escape his notice, however, that with every step he took, the others' fingers fumbled for buttons more frantically. In Hibari's presence, nobody was disinterested in finishing as soon as possible and getting out from the room.

Having donned his exorcist uniform, Hibari consulted his timetable. Today, he would get Demonology at three-thirty, Italian Grammar at four-thirty and Combat Training at six. He returned the timetable sheet into his locker, calm as ever, when he heard the door of the changing room fly open. Six boys, all older and taller than Hibari, burst in. Judging from the brown hem of their sleeves, they were fifth-graders—two years above Hibari.

'So, this is the _famous_ Hibari Kyouya, eh?' remarked the boy who entered last, after closing the wooden door behind him with a kick. He had a cleft chin and a regent hairdo and appeared to be the leader of the gang.

His expression quite unfazed, the younger boy offered no reply. His eyes glanced at the clock on the wall, which showed twenty-one past three in the afternoon. The distance between the changing room and the Demonology classroom took four minutes' walk. He had exactly five minutes to leave this room if he did not want to be late for his lesson. No. For a prefect, being late was never an option.

'What's the matter?' mocked the gang leader, 'Afraid you'll be late and lose your precious prefect band?'

At the sound of his taunt, the few remaining occupants of the changing room scampered outside, regardless of their unzipped jackets and unbuckled belts. The room was left empty, save for Hibari and the six upperclassmen.

Again, the prefect did not answer. Instead, he walked unperturbed towards the exit, where the gang leader had blocked it with his leg. The other boys lined themselves on either side of their leader, each drawing their weapon.

Hibari's eyes narrowed. 'You're dirtying the wall with your shoe.'

With raised voice, the older boy spewed back, 'You've got guts to address your _sempai_ like that! Just because you're—how did Skull phrase it … oh yeah, "the record breaker for the Cloud Section placement test after over two centuries"—you treat your seniors like shit.'

_Can't this vermin dwell on something else, besides what has taken place over two years ago?_

In a tone still as flat as before, Hibari said, 'Vongola Academy Rules, Article #17: "Students who deliberately damage school properties are liable to reimbursement as well as detention, exclusion, or any type of punishment that teachers deem appropriate to the severity caused." That rule applies to upperclassmen and underclassmen alike.'

It was only at times like this that Hibari spoke so lengthily. He had already been a quiet child by nature, but his life as an exorcist-in-training aggravated his asocial disposition.

'Still actin' high 'n' mighty, are you?' The gang leader grinned. His cronies smirked too, except for one, who was too preoccupied in nose-picking.

Hibari glimpsed at the clock again; he had wasted half a minute on idle chatter.

One of the senior boys swung his fist, aiming his spiked brass knuckles at the pit of Hibari's stomach. But the _kouhai_ had already seen his trajectory—the contraction of his muscles, the movements of his joints, the course of his gaze and the pattern of his breathing. The prefect stepped away from his assaulter's outstretched arms; the older boy's stomach ran into his clenched fist. The sempai fell on his back, vomiting bile, while his brass knuckles thudded against the floor.

Predictably, his companions charged at Hibari _en masse_. Much to their annoyance, the third-year prefect dodged their lunges effortlessly and even declared in an unruffled tone, 'Vongola Academy Rules, Article #8: "Students who execute the art of exorcism, be it in weaponry or knowledge, to harm their own fellow exorcists for personal reason are subjected to—"'

This time, before Hibari finished quoting the rest of the article, a fat boy cut him off, 'Screw you and those stinky rules!'

Undoubtedly, it was him who lay on the floor next, his _nunchaku_ flying some two yards away.

'You motherfucking cunt!' yelled the third boy, scuttling with his spear aimed at Hibari's eye.

One minute and twenty-four seconds later, Hibari swung the door open. He stepped out alone, straightening the creases of his uniform, the tonfas hanging by his waist remained undrawn. The fifth-grade boys lay unconscious on the floor, their bodies black and blue. Thus, it became official that those who sought to fight Hibari Kyouya would be granted annihilation.

###

The next afternoon, the students on school grounds were free of Hibari's reign of terror because at that moment, he was sitting on the school bus. The prefect sat with his arms folded across his chest as Namimori School gradually became a tiny dot from the back of the retreating bus. The academy was located at the heart of Shiretoko National Park, which was said to be the last unexplored region of Japan; in the Ainu Language, '_shiretoko_' meant 'the end of the Earth'.

The vehicle glided on, passing by the enchanted forest and advancing towards the direction of the settlements of the _mekura_—the word which literally meant 'ignoramus' in Japanese, but used by the Namimori exorcists as the term for calling non-exorcists, ordinary people who either did not know about or refuse to acknowledge the existence of spiritual beings.

The leaves were swaying—waving the passengers goodbye and wishing them safe return—but the gravel groaned beneath the rolling tyres, as the path in this part of the forest was unpaved. The grumbles of the pebbles irritated Hibari's ears, darkening his already bad mood. Even the splendid view of the Kamuiwakka Waterfalls gave him nothing but a small consolation. Enhanced with the natural beauty of its rocks and vegetation, this steamy natural hot spring was given the name '_kamuiwakka_', which meant 'water of the gods' in Ainu. Having so little care for such splendour, Hibari recalled the unexpected discourses that had occurred one hour prior.

###

'Do you know why I've summoned you here?' spoke what appeared to be an infant boy whose height barely reached Hibari's knees. In truth, this infant, usually referred as 'The Baby' by Hibari and a handful of other students, was the headmaster of Namimori School. He was the strongest of the seven insanely powerful people put under the curse of the Arcobaleno; their grown-up figures were reduced to that of infants, though this seemed to hold no effect for their physical strengths and psychological perceptions.

The headmaster's fingers reached for the golden tassel that tied the burgundy curtain of his office window. With each string the infant fiddled, every nerve within Hibari's body tingled; Headmaster Reborn _could_ defeat any opponent to date.

'I broke the eighth article of the Vongola Academy Rules by using exorcism techniques in retaliation to my attackers yesterday.' Hibari managed not to stammer, but he was aware that he was close to doing so. There was something about the headmaster's aura that gave him the feeling of being trapped in a dark room together with a wild beast without any weapon to defend himself with.

'So, is punishment to be expected then?' remarked the headmaster. Backlit by the afternoon sun, the fabric of his black suit glimmered slightly. A yellowish orange pacifier hung loosely by a string from his neck. The headmaster's familiar, Leon the chameleon, was snoozing soundly over the rim of his fedora.

Hibari had been prepared to hear the word 'detention'. Instead, what he heard from the infant was: 'In that case, you will escort a new teacher from the bus stop at Shiretoko Nature Centre back to Namimori School this afternoon.'

'Why?' Hibari's gaze at the headmaster was too defiant to be overlooked. The idea of a teacher who was incapable of getting to the school without a student guide was unheard of. Moreover, even _if_ the teacher did request for such company, the straight-laced students who would happily offer their dedicated service were rife.

Reborn simply smiled, though not without a devilish glint in his eyes. 'The point of a punishment is the implementation of an activity that the wrongdoer would find least enjoyable.'

Hibari's jaw twitched, brows knitted into a frown, as he made his descent upon the spiralling stairs outside the headmaster's office at the top of the circular tower. Although his sociopathic demeanour was a secret to no one, he could not help getting agitated about Reborn's awareness on how he would have been able to withstand detentions without breaking a sweat. Instead, the headmaster chose to subject him to the worst kind of torture: Confinement within a _crowd_ of noisy bus passengers, from Vongola Academy to Shiretoko Nature Centre, for six whole hours. And that was only because they were travelling on an enchanted school bus—it would have taken over eight hours via an ordinary bus_, if_ the mekura could find the path.

Yet, what had awaited Hibari outside the crenelated tower was even more unexpected: The six boys he had beaten the day before were currently standing under a maple tree in the courtyard with the ivy-draped inner curtain wall behind their backs. Hibari's supposition was that they were there to square him away; as the troublemakers who ganged up on a single lowerclassman, they surely had received a more severe punishment than his. Still, the prefect intended to walk past his upperclassmen with an intention to ignore them completely, unless they attacked him again.

He was some five metres away from them when the gang leader called out, 'Wait, Hibari Kyouya—ah, I-I mean, aniki!'

Even though Hibari's lips remained shut, one glare from him was enough to convey: 'Since when have I become your elder brother?'

'Uh,' the gang leader fidgeted, his Regent-styled hair moving oddly as he did so. 'We've talked and come to an agreement that we … we want to follow you.'

Hibari eyed him in silently. Contrary to his crude demeanour yesterday, the older boy was courteous today, had even used the polite way of even going so far as to speak in _keigo_, which is normally addressed to one who was older, or of a higher social standing.

The leader of the gang bowed to Hibari. 'On behalf of all six of us, I, Kusakabe Tetsuya, apologise for our misbehaviour yesterday. We look to you for guidance from now on, Kyou-aniki.'

'I'm not anyone's aniki,' replied Hibari as he stepped away.

'A-ah, well…,' He shifted uncomfortably while making a short, tentative pause, and then: 'Kyou-san?'

_What?_ Hibari stared at the other boy in disbelief.

'Kyou-san it is then.' Taking Hibari's dumbfounded muteness as an approval, Kusakabe confirmed with much enthusiasm.

In the end, even with Hibari shooing them away, the newly self-proclaimed 'Disciplinary Committee' saw him off all the way to the school bus stop. Little did he know that from the next day onwards, they would congregate around him, with evenly matched hairdos, so that their uniformed appearance would better suit that of a proper disciplinary committee.

###

The best thing while travelling around _Shiretoko-Goko_ or 'The Five Jewels'—according to the standard of one who had been sick enough to travel on bumpy roads—was its paved street. Bedecked with pedestrian wooden trail along their perimeters, the five lakes served as a boundary between wilderness and civilisation, and from this point onwards, hello asphalt!

When the bus passed by the second lake, Hibari took delight in momentarily watching a bear swimming in the small, tranquil lake surrounded by a luxuriant forest. But then, the vermillion streaks in the glorious cupola of heaven presaged the dusk. By sheer radiance, the golden rays of the sun perforated through the bus window, compelling the boy to shield his eyes with his forearm. The next minute, Hibari gave up and closed his eyes entirely.

Doing so only allowed the bitter memories of his second bite to revisit him.

###

Every year, each branch of the Vongola Academy of Exorcism from all around the world, would arrange a field trip, allowing the exorcists-in-training to meet real-life monsters while being under the care and protection of their teachers, with different locations designated for each grade. Five years ago, along with all the fourth grade students of Basic Exorcism Studies and three teachers, Hibari visited Denmark. The young exorcists-to-be were not going to indulge themselves carousing around the lush parterres of Tivoli Gardens or the opulent interiors of Amalienborg Palace; they were here to see Danish spirits.

The students had the chance to come face-to-face with real spiritual beings only during a field trip or mission assignments. The creatures studied at the Vongola Academy of Exorcism during their daily lessons back at the Academy were enchanted manifestation created from the DNA of the relevant creatures. They possessed the traits of the creatures in question. Some argued that they were like clones to a certain extent, except that they were not truly alive—which made the description of 'animate weapons who had no will of their own' fit more accurately. Others insisted that they were closer to being tangible illusions. The fact remained, however, that they were disposable and new copies can be easily re-generated in the Thunder Section Laboratory. The exorcists called these '_kairai_', which meant 'dummy' or 'puppet' in Japanese.

'That would be an infringement on spiritual rights,' explained a teacher when her student asked why they did not practice on the real thing. 'Imagine how inconvenient it would be for a demon to get exorcised over and over until all students in this class get their turn.'

Under close supervision of their teachers, the Vongola students had purified many a _myling_—the ghost of a child left to die in the wilderness—so that their spirit could pass on. While visiting a farm, they shook hand with a _nisse_, who was a good wight that, in exchange for food, took care of the house and barn while the farmer was sleeping. The students had also witnessed Isobe, the only male teacher supervising them during this fieldtrip, repelling the allurement of the _ellepiger_—alder tree maidens whose hollow backs contradicted their frontal pulchritude.

Their second day of activity opened with the fiddle performance of a young and handsome _fossegrimen_'s on his waterfall—much to the music lovers and pubescent female students' delight. After grabbing a quick _smørrebrød_ lunch, they paid a visit to an old cemetery to seek wisdom from the ghosts. The sun shone cheerfully and everything was fine … until the troublemaker Uboshita kicked an unnamed, lichen-covered tomb when none of the teachers was looking.

The crude quality of its grave marker indicated that it had been erected before the tenth century, but its Patonce Cross decoration seemed to be added centuries later, during the age of the chivalry. The crucifix had four arms of equal length, each terminating in floriated points. Of these arms, none were scratched, but the intersection—a circular inscription of the _Ichthus_ symbol—which had already dented, now formed a larger crack. Why then would this ancient sepulchral structure, so steadfast despite its superannuated age, break at the kicking force of a mere twelve-year-old child? One could only presume that it was the child's spiritual strength, rather than his physical one, that caused such a fissure—Uboshita's spiritual energy ranked highest of all fourth graders.

The class members were deep in conversation with the ghosts, who undoubtedly welcomed their visit, not realising what terrible entity had been unleashed, now that the seal was broken. A student was asking the differences between _Boller_, _Birkes_ and _Rundstykker_ breads when the baker's ghost gave out a startle. The moustached transparent figure cast a worried glance at the tomb that Uboshita had just desecrated and swore, 'Oh fuck!'

The student raised her eyebrows in indignation; to the best of her knowledge, she had not done anything offensive so as to deserve her interviewee's vitriol. Tossing her braided hair over her shoulder, she began, 'Excuse me?'

However, the chestnut-haired ghost ignored her question and shouted frenziedly, 'Go away; it's dangerous in here! GO!'

Before she could ask him anything else, the ghost had vanished without a trace, and so had the other ghosts. No more wispy, ethereal presence floated around on the cemetery ground. In bewilderment, the students looked at the desecrated tomb—the direction that all ghosts seemed to have dreaded before they removed themselves from the burial ground. Nobody knew why Uboshita had collapsed, unconscious.

The most senior of the three teachers, Fahlmer, who rushed to the boy's help, caught sight of the tombstone shifting. She alerted herself for the worst-case scenario and instructed, 'Wakatsuki-sensei, the Shield Charm! Isobe-sensei, guide the students!'

The bespectacled woman knelt down and drew the triangular shape of the Shield of the Trinity in mid-air using her spiritual energy, the arcane diagram emitting a radiant silver glow. The spiky-haired man directed the students to calm down and concentrate. The jowly-faced woman gathered all her strength and hurled the swooned Uboshita into the safety of the _Scutum Fidei_. The boy's torso got in, but his legs were still outside the words '_non est_' that bridged '_Pater_' and '_Sanctus Spiritus_'—the phrase was supposed to be read as: 'Pater non est Sanctus Spiritus' or 'Father is not the Holy Spirit'.

The air grew noisome and dank and mildew-like, filled with the breathing of the open crypt. The malodour was repulsive enough to make eyes water. A gravid, gruesome feeling settled into the funereal ground, almost like smoke creeping into a lung. Hibari knew this smell: The foetid scent of the undead.

The gravestone shattered. From underneath the undulating ground, five fingers erupted, their form of driest withering and their skin of darkest blue, while their nails long and curved and caked with dirt. They grabbed Fahlmer's forearm. Curled around it. Lingered.

The teacher struggled to free herself from the talon-like attack, but her assailant's grip was far too dominant. With her other hand, she took out from her pocket a Saint Benedict Medal, inscribed with the _Vade Retro Satana_ formula to ward off Satan. The ghoulish creature's movement halted. A small amount of smoke billowed forth from the fiend's sizzling skin, where the amulet was pressed against it.

_It's all right; there's only one enemy_, Hibari bit his lip and assured himself. _Three teachers and a class of exorcists-in-training are more than enough for a fight._

Just as the rest of the class were exhaling in relief, Fahlmer screamed. The creature's grip tightened, ripping her arm from her body. The plump woman recoiled in agony, her scrunched-up face bearing the tale of her torment. Nausea swept upon the young exorcists-in-training when they saw blood splattering on the ground and neighbouring grave markers.

The ground was agape, and from it, a figure rose to its full height, bearing a visage so withered and a terror so ancient. A full Viking armour—an iron helmet, ravaged with rust; a round shield of alder, mouldered with decay; and a _brynje_, from which broken strands of chainmail dangled in rusty tatters—braced its body. Underneath the fabric of its tunic, its trunk seemed lean, even emaciated; its belt, to which was fastened a corroding battle axe, hung loosely from its tenuous waist. Its dark blue skin, partially marked by the mastication of maggots, was sullied with filth, and yet, it still glimmered with an eerie incandescence. It looked almost like a ghost, with the phosphorescent substance glowing all around it; except that it was _tangible._ It could touch them and hurt them, even devour them—just as it had done to Fahlmer's ripped arm. The bright sunlight forthrightly illuminated every detail of the heinous act, from the moment the abomination's yellow teeth gnawed off one of the fingers down to the final crunch as they pulverised the bone.

This was a '_draug_'—the monstrology lessons had given the young exorcists-in-training that much knowledge. What the lessons had not taught them was how little resistance amulets could do against such a ghoulish entity, how helpless their formerly invincible instructor was at the hand of a real monster, how the lives of thirty-one students and their three teachers might end in a single summer day.

Unbeknownst to the grave visitors, the crypt had been sealed by the Knights of Templar in times of old, who had then placed the Patonce Cross and Ichthus to guard the tomb. Thus, the draugen had come to be pent underground. For centuries, it had lain beneath the soil with no air to breathe and no food to eat; still, the black coach of Death refused to admit such an accursed creature as the draugen. But now, at the breaking of the seal, the draugen was liberated from its subterranean prison.

As the draugen strode towards them, the students reeled back in horror. Some of the younger ones covered their eyes; others clenched their classmates' shirts. They had managed to secure Uboshita's body inside the shield's perimeter, but even such a shield could not shelter mortals from a demon of the supreme rank.

'Fahlmer-sensei, take the children and run!' cried Isobe, 'Ciara, back me up!' Withdrawing his _tessen _folding fan, the spiky-haired instructor stepped out of the shield's borders. His fiancée, Wakatsuki, followed closely behind him.

An expression of irresolution passed for an instant over Fahlmer's face, but being a teacher necessitated her to prioritise the students' safety above her colleagues'. Clutching the severed arm with her good hand, she shouted, 'This way, class!'

The students thronged behind the injured teacher, panic driving them forward. As exorcists-in-training, they ought to put theory they had learnt into practice, but all that came to their minds now was a single word: RUN!

The last thing Hibari saw before he turned to follow Fahlmer's lead was the cadmium blades protruding from Isobe's unfolded fan clash against the portion of the draugen's helmet that covered its neck. Born from the union of a man and a vampiress, Isobe possessed the vampiric superhuman strength as well as the immunity to sunlight exposure. He was a full-pledged A-rank exorcist who had slain over thirty monsters and captured a dozen alive. And yet, gone had the air of confidence that had usually accompanied the dhampir, ousted by a stern look and knitting brows.

_They _will_ be all right_, Hibari assured himself._ Wakatsuki-sensei's spells can protect Isobe-sensei from the undead's infection._

Although raised by her human father, Wakatsuki was mothered by a _dullahan_—a headless Irish wight who carried a whip made of human corpse's spine and rode a feral black horse. Famed for both speed and efficiency in battles, Ciara Wakatsuki was the best spell-caster in Namimori after the Head of Department from the Storm Section. Recently, she had even received an award for a spell of her invention. Together with Isobe, she would make a perfect combo.

However, not even two minutes had lapsed when the running students heard, 'REZART!'

The high-pitched scream gave Hibari gooseflesh. No diva's aria filled the opera hall; only the threnody of the distressed woman spread across the realm of the dead. Yet, Wakatsuki's voice was no less melodious than how it sounded in normal circumstances. The irony that he appreciated the beauty in such shriek was alarming.

Without pausing, Fahlmer fumbled with her mobile phone, trying to request for help. Some of the students glanced over their shoulders with a worried look; others chose not to witness what was happening to the two teachers they had left behind—the panic tone that Wakatsuki-sensei used while uttering her beloved's name could never mean anything good.

As the students, under Fahlmer's lead, approached the border of the necropolis, the road seemed to assume a graver desolation. The footpath was penumbral and gloomily quiet. No insect or lizard prowled about the rocks underneath the leafless twigs of the dead trees. There was no tell-tale of the other two teachers. No sign of the draugen either.

Suddenly, Hibari felt an uneasy sensation; a cold feeling of dread twisting deep within his guts. The fiendish creature did not seem to be pursuing them, but the air around them now reeked of the same filth as when the draugen first emerged from its dungeon. The smell was faint, but its presence was unmistakable. Hibari felt every inch of skin twitching in horror at this realisation.

Fahlmer dropped her mobile phone onto the grass to grab the student who stood nearest to her.

'Sensei?' asked the student, her tone compassionate, probably under the impression that the severity of Fahlmer's wound obliged the teacher to seek support even just to keep her standing.

Then, the little girl's eyes widened with dread. The arm that was gripping hers had turned bluish in pallor, the skin speckled with amaranth venation. There were unnatural protrusions on Fahlmer's eyeballs that rendered the lids impossible to close. The teacher's lens and corneas were gone, leaving only the lividness of the vitreous chambers to occupy the entire eyes. Wispy odour of decay seeped out of the now undead's arm, where the execrable draugen had severed it earlier.

A frightened squawk rang out, followed by a cacophony that comprised shock, fear and desperation until a boy, Lambo Bovino, threw a rock at Fahlmer and her grip became enfeebled. Another boy—Yamamoto Takeshi—snatched the opportunity to break the girl free from the undead, though not before the teacher bit off the upper half of her ear. The students scampered off in different directions and soon, in the bedlam that was ensued, they were caught in voluminous swirls of mist. Little did they realise that the next time they crossed paths with one another, some of them would sink their teeth upon their comrades' flesh.

Silence presided over the pathway once more.

Hibari ran northwards. No matter where he looked, everything was covered in a thick, eddying fog that had also swallowed his classmates. The only sign that they had ever been there were the disturbed dried leaves and mulch on umber earth. The graveyard looked as though it had been deserted again, but not without a menace in its quiescence. The ground was watching every movement.

Wheeling this way and that, Hibari blundered around on the foreign soil. Hopelessly lost. Alienated. He waved his arms about in an attempt to dispel as much fog as possible, but to no avail. If only drauger had not been endowed with magical abilities! Weather control was one of the draugerne's attributes. The blanket of mist—the miasmal white substance that had not existed before the rise of the draugen—separated the students from one another with uncanny swiftness as well as prevented them from exiting the funerary ground. The coils of mist rose, enfolding the entire scene around him with their malignant, pallid emanation.

_There has to be a landmark_, the boy tried to look for something that would give him his bearings. But there was just fog out there, interminable fog amidst treacherous gravels and shifting trees beneath the carked sky. Even the white clouds above had turned slate-grey.

The silence deepened with each step he took. The air shimmered and retreated before him, taunting him with its placidity. Columns of dust arose and stole away like apparitional thieves. At any other time, Hibari could alert himself in case unseen, sinister-laughing cacodemons rose all about him from the graveyard ground, lurking behind the grave markers and soon emerging to assail him. Today, the sighting of a draug made this prospect pale in comparison.

The lone boy listened closely for any scream—the sound would enable him to distinguish who had been infected in precaution to their imminent attack. Brigitte Desmarais, whose ear had been nibbled by Fahlmer's, had to be a goner. Uboshita Tomio, who was left unconscious near the draugen, was in all likelihood zombified too. The three of them—with Liesbeth Fahlmer—would prey upon others. Who else would fall? There was no sound. No frightened yelp. No shriek of surprise. Nothing.

The fog inspissated thicker, turning so condensed that it walled his vision. Sweat drenched the boy's temple. Drauger were reputed to possess shape-shifting attribute—a seal; a great, flayed bull; and a grey, earless, tailless horse with a broken back were among the list of what drauger were capable of transfiguring themselves into. Nonetheless, no literary source stated that a draug could not transmogrify itself into a human.

_Think of anything but fear!_ The little boy tried to divert his thoughts, though with little success. The fright he was fevered with kept resurging from different corners of his mind.

If only everyone had been protected by the safety of the exorcist uniform! Those high collars and long sleeves could have prevented monster bites, as their synthetic fibres—light-weighted, flameproof, waterproof and bulletproof—were enchanted with dwarves' hair. Fahlmer mightn't have lost her arm and none of the students would have been infected. Yet, such a thing would be too much to wish for; during fieldtrips, teachers and students wore ordinary clothing to blend with the mekura.

Hibari tried to recall the details of his exorcism lessons. The teachers often mentioned how crucial it was to make use of the unique traits each individual possessed. The Vongola Academy staff and students were largely composed of half-breeds between supernatural beings and humans, in which one held different potentials from another. The descendant of a _selkie_, for instance, would be able to unleash her power most potently in the proximity of water.

Nervously, Hibari closed his eyes. The busaw's saliva that flowed within his arteries had endowed him with keener senses. When he concentrated to the utmost and used this ability, other people's murmurs became audible at normal speaking level, and their normal speeches became deafening thunders. Albeit he received no improvement for sight, he was capable of sniffing out freshly-shed blood within a six-hundred-metre radius.

Hibari switched off the inhuman power within him whenever he could, but he had to resort to it now. The sheer sensitivity was stupendous, terrifying; his own heartbeat, along with myriads of other sounds, came to his ears with excruciating clarity. Even in this vapour-laden field, everything was animate. The lives of the local vegetation filled every corner of his conscience—blooming, bursting, teeming, rotting—and the variety of it could even implode a botanist's brain. But what's more, among the tiny insects that were crawling or flying through the monstrous weeds, hope of survival and despair of the draugen's unrivalled powers contended in bristling fear. This fear infiltrated to every recess within the marrow of the boy's bones, heightening the tingling sensation of nervousness within him. A part of him regretted the decision to employ the busaw mode because of this hypersensitivity, but deep down, he knew that such a drastic measure was necessary.

Hibari clamped his jaws together to prevent their quivering; the rising tide of dread was gnawing at the remaining reasons within him. Currently, the mephitic scent of death erupted from six different spots within the vicinity; the foulest of which, indubitably, belonged to the draugen. Two living entities were located very close to the draugen; both Wakatsuki and Isobe were still alive. Even so, this was no time to stay idle, for an undead was approaching from the north-east, fifty metres ahead.

In order to forefend attack on or by his classmates, the easiest thing do was to avoid everyone, especially considering the number of undead had increased within the span of three minutes. This strategy worked for over an hour before it became evident that all efforts to find the exit were in vain, at least until the mystical fog had lifted. The busaw's smell and hearing sensitivity did not enable Hibari to detect the exit; sooner or later, he was bound to chance on the newly-turned draugerne.

Hibari bent over with his hands on his knees. Hard pants escaped from his mouth. Sweat streaked from his chin. This busaw mode was wearing him out. He had never, in his entire life, activated it for more than twenty minutes at a time. Today, he could not go on after the eighty-fourth minute. He had no choice but to deactivate it and return to being an ordinary child who was lost in the curdling charnel mist. There had already been eleven living corpses in the proximity so far.

He was trying to decide what to do next when suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by the rustling sound of the grass behind. With his ultra-sensitive hearing, the footsteps would have sounded booming, but at his present state, they sounded very light, if not surreptitious. He turned around, expecting to see one of his classmates, but to his surprise, it was only a scuttling marmot.

The boy exhaled in relief and turned back. He was about to walk again when a realisation hit him: What if, perchance, the marmot had been affected? He swerved, taking extra caution to prevent the furry rodent from biting his leg. Fortunately, it had already gone; he wouldn't want to hurt small animals.

When Hibari resumed his course, the path ahead was no longer empty; his classmate, Junichiro Bergmann, appeared before him. The other boy's mouth was slightly open to reveal two rows of pointy teeth, in-between which, a repulsive amount of saliva was dribbling. Two kinds of scent emitted from Bergmann's body. One was the sewer-like odour which derived from the large cut on Bergmann's forearm; the other, the ammonia originating from Bergmann's lower part. Probably, the half-German boy had leaked on his pants during the undead's assault.

At this sight, a shiver passed through Hibari: He would have to slay or be slain. Not that he was particularly close to Bergmann, but it was nonetheless a fact that this freckled boy had shared the same classroom and dining hall with him for the last four years.

Hibari looked to his left and right, considering the option of escape. However, as though reading his mind, the taller child leapt to block his escape route, forcing the younger boy to step back with clenched jaw.

Bellowing a battle cry, Bergmann hefted his mace and swung it across. Hibari sidestepped to dodge it, and his opponent's weapon missed his ear by a breath. Using his tonfas, Hibari managed to deflect Bergmann's mace. Twice, his strikes managed to hit the half-German boy, but the undead could no longer feel the pain.

The mace came swinging menacingly through the air once more. Hibari met it with his misericordes. At the clash of the blades, a strident sound—a strange, agonised keening—egressed. Bergmann checked a second blow, and a third, then, just once, fell back a step.

The flurry of blows resumed. Again and again the weapons collided, until Hibari was panting from the effort; when it came to brute strength, Bergmann was superior by far. Then, after five minutes of exchanged blows, Hibari's parry came a beat too late. The first hit cracked the smaller boy's ribs. He staggered. In that moment of weakness, another strike assailed him. And another. And another.

The next thing Hibari noticed was that the bruise in his ribs was minor compared to the excruciating pain on the rest of his body, but he had no time to dwell any further. His opponent's heavy blows had brought him to his knee. Now Bergmann's standing figure towered his kneeling one, hands firmly gripping on the mace. Bergmann was only nine months older than Hibari, but this small gap in age did not mean a small gap in build; Bergmann's frame could easily pass him as an average fourteen-year-old. If he did not stop the auburn-haired boy, that mace would split his skull open. Even so, one of those hands was the same hand that had passed him the basketball in some P.E. lessons and, once, lent him a sharpener when the lead of his pencil had broken.

Hibari's blood ran cold in his veins. The mace was getting closer. He rose. With one pull of the trigger, the upper parts of the tonfas' compartments opened to reveal a pair of handle-less misericordes. He crossed his arms overhead, connecting the twin blades of osmium to his opponent's throat. The metal pierced through the tender flesh of Bergmann's neck; and yet, no squall, no bulge of eyes, no involuntary jerk, no spasm of muscles followed. No more agony for the undead.

With another dexterous blow, Hibari sheared the lean strip of flesh which still held the head. The head dropped, rolling and rebounding off the ground. Bergmann's body toppled down to the face of earth, thrashing wildly, as though in remonstration to stay upright. Only after seconds later did the jactitation discontinue. A common metal would have been insufficient to extirpate an undead, but an exorcist's blade, which could even slash through the incorporeal substance of a ghost, could bring an undead an eternal rest.

After shaking the blood off his blades in one swift, cutting motion, Hibari trudged with a downward gaze. He had killed a fellow human being.

_Killed_.

The detestable mist that loomed persistently over the funeral ground refused to tell him that his strife for survival was not in vain.

Hibari's next opponent was yet another classmate. Geavonna Vasquez was careening about with an _espada ropera_ embedded in her chest. Her olive skin looked paler, with venous specks spreading over it like venation on an etiolated plant. Blood gushed from the large hole in her abdomen, where her right hand grappled with her intestines, fighting to keep them inside; while her left hand fended off her right one.

'It hurts … save me; I don't want to become a draug!' besought the girl. Her voice sounded heavier, so much gruffer than her usual timbre that it sounded as though she was grunting rather than pleading.

_Hurts? She can still feel the pain?_

Hibari wondered if she had attempted to take her own life by stabbing her heart with her own weapon before an undead perforated her stomach. The other newly-turned draugerne roamed while decaying, not knowing that they were being led astray by the accursed instinct to prey upon the living. On the other hand, she, owing to her half-dead circumstances, retained the woeful consciousness of the living while she gradually withered.

The sixteen-year-old girl used to be part of the noisy, gossiping bunch that he had disliked, and if his guess were correct, she had acted cowardly by taking her own life, rather than opposing the monsters. Even so, the borderline between fondness and disfavour became no longer visible in the dark hour of mortality. With clenched jaw, Hibari swung his tonfa again. Just as its name indicated, the misericorde granted her a merciful death strike. Such was the only salvation he could bestow upon the wretched.

Looking at the blood droplets streaming on his blade, Hibari tightened his grip on the tonfa. Bergmann might have no longer felt a thing, but Vasquez had not been a full undead. She could probably have been saved, _if_ he had known how.

Hibari resumed his quest for the graveyard exit, each plodding step ponderous with guilt.

Instead of the gate of wrought iron, what he found next was the fight between his two classmates. The top of Sasagawa Ryouhei's head smashed onto İstemihan Tekin's nose. Blood gushed from the Turk's nostrils, but his unchanging expression indicated that he felt no pain. He had already become an undead. A few steps behind, Sasagawa Kyoko watched with fingers clasped together in a prayer, anxious for her brother's safety.

The white-haired Japanese boy swung his head back as far as it would go and then charged again. A loud crack resounded; his second head-butt broke the Tekin's jaw. Again, Tekin was unaffected by the pain. However, the older Sasagawa's force pushed him backwards, staggering. His grip on Sasagawa's collar loosened. Next, his broken chin suffered further damage from Sasagawa's uppercut punch.

Hibari turned away. His assistance was unneeded when victory was this obvious.

After a few more minutes of sauntering, Hibari perceived that a tree trunk had been hauled across the pathway, its branches protruding in all directions and the stumps filed down to brutal points. There were traces of familiars' spiritual energy: a sky lion and a giraffe's. Even the scaredy-cat Sawada Tsunayoshi had been compelled to fight Mujahid Al-Dimashqi there, so it seemed.

It was wrong of Hibari to assume that the third kill would make him feel less guilty than the first two. When he relinquished the headless body of Park Dae-Jung, bile rose to his throat. The draugen might be the source of the calamity, but the fact remained that it was the child named Hibari Kyouya who had massacred his friends.

The fourth kill took the littlest effort of all. Shara Sekarwati, his classmate who had passed her years of basic exorcism with the bare minimum grades and frequently resorted to trickery, was no match for him. She ran to his side, screaming frantically and begging for protection, while claiming that an undead was chasing her. Nevertheless, he did not miss the pungency oozing from her supposedly brown, yet now achromatic, skin. His misericorde had stabbed her heart before she could even draw her _creese_.

Hibari's fifth opponent, however, was not going to take it easy.

While Hibari was striding, clouded with guilt, his wretched mind neglected the ever-presence of impending danger. Something came upon his way, moving rapidly from the seven 'o' clock direction. Before Hibari could turn around, the thing slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the ground. A crushing weight bore down on his back, pressing the air from his lungs. No matter how much he struggled, he couldn't remove the stranger's knee. Amidst the mist, a noxious odour was overpowering him. A hand closed around his head and dunked his face into the soil below. The fingers were short and chubby and adult-sized, very much like…

Before the dirt obscured his vision, the boy caught a glimpse of a blurred mass of black stripes on white. A white tiger. Fahlmer-sensei's familiar.

Familiar? Of course! Why hadn't he thought of using it? Hibari concentrated hard, to bring the image of his own familiar in his mind, mentally calling its name and asking for its help.

Mud filled Hibari's ears and nose as his face was pressed deeper into the dark earth. But the familiar responded to his adjuration. A hedgehog appeared, floating in the air and shooting its spikes at the tiger.

The deeper his head sank, the more difficult it was for him to breathe, and the more Hibari felt warm and sleepy. _Yield_, said a voice inside his head. _What are you struggling for? Most of your classmates must be dead by now. The other two teachers will likely become drauger too. There's no hope for survival._

Death had haply spared him because Dino had arrived to save his skin from the mga busaw three years prior. But coincidence did not happen twice.

Dino…

If he died as a child with no significant achievement today, how could he grow into someone Dino would be proud of?

Hibari opened the side compartments of his tonfas, in which from each sprang a spiked flail or _chigiriki_. The teachers and other students had been of opinion that this feature was redundant when Hibari had handed down his design to the weapon maker two years prior, but the boy had remained adamant about having something akin to the feature of Dino's weapon for his own choice of weapon. Now the flails lashed upon Fahlmer—not enough to give her pain, but they did well in removing her from Hibari.

Hibari sprang to his feet, and, still coughing from the dirt, he saw Fahlmer draw her chakram. (Despite her Dutch origin, she had been raised in Pakistan; hence, the choice of familiar and weapon.)

The tonfa flew, torn from the boy's grip, and went skittering away, before his opponent's hand slammed into his injured ribs and clubbed him onto the ground once more. The pebbles rattled beneath him and the lightest breeze sent clouds of dirt stinging into his eyes.

Hibari jabbed the misericordes at her.

Missed, jabbed again—

Missed again.

Not only did his teacher predict his every movement, but she also parried away his every attack effortlessly. To Hibari, it was utter torture; his fingers, his wrists, his arms, his shoulders were strained just from trying to hit her. Beads of perspiration rained down his face in big drops. In stark contrast, Fahlmer was hardly even panting; fatigue was a stranger to the undead.

Minutes by minutes, as cuts and bruises etched across Hibari's body, fright and exhaustion, too, enveloped the child. When the busaw's claws had pierced through his flesh three years prior, his blood had only been trickling, rather than gushing like it was now. Hibari struggled to his knees and tried to call out for help, but pain seared through his throat, where Fahlmer's chakram had grazed it.

With all his strength, Hibari swung his twin tonfas at the pit of Fahlmer's stomach one after another. The blades swished and weaved through the air, glinting in the afternoon sun as he moved from one familiar stance to the next with practised ease. Still, his teacher dodged his attacks and left new cuts on his skin yet again.

Even so, the new pain awakened something within him. It made him feel so afraid. It made him feel so excited. It made him feel so _alive_. There was a bright flash, a spark—and then Hibari felt heat surging through his veins, every fibre of his nerves tingling from the strange sensation. He winced, biting back a noise of discomfort, as the frisson increased and grew unbearable…

The first odd thing he noticed was a stranger's claw holding his tonfa. The boy moved his weapon, trying to shake it off. The claw-like fingers with long, black nails moved along with him. He squeezed the tonfa handle tighter. So did the stranger's hand. He used his other hand. The same long, pointy nails were there. It was then he learnt that the two things resembling a beast's talons had been _his_ own hands all along.

He felt power, immense power that he didn't know he had ever possessed. A strange, baseless confidence told him he could even uproot a tree if he'd wanted to. And appetite for retaliation surged within him. There was an urge to torture, to punish his opponent for injuring him several times during their current battle, to show her the meaning of strength…

_What?_

Hibari's breath hitched. What the heck was he thinking of in the midst of a fight? He blinked a few times, and then concentrated on his survival. He launched another attack. He snapped his arm out, shoving the tonfa's cylindrical body into his teacher's mouth. This time, neither Fahlmer's speed nor power could defend her. The metal crunched into the senior fighter's teeth and she tumbled backwards, her chakram flung from her chubby hand and clattering on the road.

Hibari was still trying to figure out what was happening, only to glance up and see Fahlmer spitting out two blood-covered incisors onto the grass. Then, fur gradually began to cover his opponent's body—grey fur, pointed ears and massive paws. Even in her undead state, the woman transformed into a she-wolf—three-legged, owing to the amputation of her hand by the draugen. Fahlmer inherited a quarter blood of a werewolf from her grandfather and her exorcist ability allowed her to assume the wolf's form at any time of her choosing, and not strictly only during a full moon.

In her human form, Fahlmer was as mighty as an average middle-weight pro-wrestler. In her lupine form, she was beyond Hibari's worst nightmares. Her strength was apparent from the ferocity of her clawed swipes, and even the way she flung her chakram his way. He barely managed to duck out of harm's way, the weapon hissing narrowly past his shoulder. Without giving him the time for a second evasion, Fahlmer slashed her claws across Hibari's face, just next to his nose, forcing him to lurch back in pain.

Fahlmer swiped her claws out again, slashing across the boy's chest and spattering drops of blood even as he tried to get away. He dove at her, but his outstretched arms caught nothing but air—she was much too fast.

Hibari jolted as Fahlmer's fangs sank into the crook of his neck. The sharpness of the wolf's fang imparted electrifying pain into him. Her speed gave him no reprieve to hold back an agonised scream. Hibari struggled to free himself from the death-grip. Then, everything was a mêlée of blows and bites, clashing and clanging metals, howls and grunts. Just as fresh wounds bloomed all over the child's body, red splodges marred the grey fur of the wolf.

Although both combatants were equipped with supernatural strengths, the teacher's superior battle experience gave her the upper hand. As soon as she managed to swipe the tonfas out of Hibari's hands, Fahlmer pounced down on the student, pinning him to the ground. She loomed over him, blue eyes staring down as she bared her sharp fangs into a snarl, saliva dribbling from her jaws.

The ground hit Hibari hard in the back, and the world turned over around him. He shook his head, trying to stop the trees and the sky from spinning. Fingers still twitching, the boy glanced longingly at his tonfas, flung some six and eight metres away. Farther away, Roll, the hedgehog, was multiplying itself and besieged Fahlmer's tiger from twelve directions. The boy still did not trust the strength of the new black nails—he did not yet understand this new, hidden power—but what other option did he have?

Hibari struck the huge canine body above him with his nails, cleaving through the fur and the pelt beneath and splitting her chest, revealing the red flesh inside. For eight horrifying seconds, it seemed that this drastic measure had no effect on the undead she-wolf. But when Hibari's razor-sharp nails pulled her pulseless heart from her chest, she stepped back. This type of undead, as stated in the textbooks, was cautious of the loss of an organ.

Hibari seized the opportunity to collect his weapons. Before he reached his second tonfa however, Fahlmer's chakram spun speedily at him and would have sliced off his forearm had he not shifted away in time. The circular blade whirled so closely, he could feel the breeze in its wake.

The she-wolf caught the chakram with her jaw, only to send it flying towards Hibari again. This time, the blade nicked against his cheek, grazing it. Hibari flinched when he felt the stinging pain, but he pressed forward. Fahlmer hurled her chakram again, missing the boy by just a slight margin. He ducked away from the path of the flying chakram, steadily closing the gap between them.

Snarling angrily, the wolf sent her chakram curving through the air once more towards him. Hibari managed to parry the blow however, knocking the chakram away before bringing his blade down to clash against Fahlmer's own—carbide-tipped steel versus osmium, the blades scraping noisily against each other before locking together. Fahlmer growled, fangs bared, the muscles of her face a rigid mask. Hibari's eyebrows knitted, teeth gritted, refusing to surrender.

Seeing an opening when Fahlmer aimed at his throat, Hibari flung a sideways sweep at his opponent's undefended head. She raised her leg on instinct to block the blow, but the child's misericorde flashed down through the air. The osmium blade tore her carbide-tipped steel away and crashed into her skull, splitting her vertically into two and spraying a rain of blood all over the turf. The wind sighed in witness as her legs crumpled and her limbs flopped. Her beautiful grey fur was dabbed with crimson droplets.

Hibari looked at the two halves of Fahlmer's body in disbelief. Did such a thin misericorde cut through the wolf's sturdy bone structure? Was it his power … or rather, the _busaw's_ power that resided within his blood? He waited, both tonfas poised for another strike. His opponent lay sprawled out on the ground, over the pool of blood, with one leg silently twitching and the others, still. Then, the teacher moved no more. Only, from each body half, the she-wolf's steel blue orb stared and stared at him. Without blinking. Without ceasing.

The white tiger dissolved into the miasmal air; its contract with its master became null and void the moment the exorcist met her demise. Hibari's hedgehog, too, vanished, for its present task had been completed.

The boy looked at his hands, and, to his wonder and relief, the busaw-like nails were no longer there. He sagged, gulping air and scrubbing cold sweat off his face with his sleeve. After slaying the teacher who often praised his martial arts performance during classes, could he still care about such a thing as sin? If he were to descend into hell, he would take as many undead as he could with him. He exhaled and rested for a while.

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. Reunion

Thank you very, very much to_ AquaticMoose_ for beta reading this chapter.

* * *

Invultuation = a form of witchcraft involving melting a wax image of the intended victim or, in voodoo, sticking it with pins

Sphenoid bone = the unpaired bone situated at the front middle of the skull in front of the temporal bone and basilar part of the occipital bone

Cerebellum (a.k.a. little brain) = a region of the brain that plays an important role in motor control

Hoggin = a compactable groundcover that is composed of a mixture of gravel, sand and clay that produces a buff coloured bound surface

_Bishamonten_ = god of war and the chief of the Four Heavenly Kings; the Japanese equivalent for Vaiśravaṇa

_Zashiki-warashi_ = a child-like Japanese spirit who plays harmless prank and was believed to bring good luck and prosperity for the household it dwells in

* * *

Hibari noticed the engraving on one of the tombs amidst the fallen leaves and twigs decomposing on the cemetery floor. This tomb belonged to a child who had lived from 1990 to 1996; its grave marker bore a small carving of a masked super hero with billowing cape. The exorcist-in-training traced his fingers at the super hero carving, but the bas relief caught some of the bloodstains from his hand. His opponents' blood. The proof of sin that he had committed. Didn't becoming a defender of justice use to be an aspiration to a five-year-old Hibari Kyouya? And yet, what had he become now?

A gust of wind swept dust through the cemetery and stray leaves blocked the tomb carving from Hibari's view. There was no other entity in sight; the draugen, the teachers, the exorcists-in-training, the flock of insects—living or dead—were all veiled by the mist. The boy turned away and resumed his search for the graveyard exit.

Hibari's feet seemed to fall of their own accord, taking him through the maze of scattered skeletal trees and tombstones. Through this mist, the rays of the sun in such a funereal sky were too scanty to illumine the perilous path he followed amongst mounds and crucifixes and broken graves. Later, after some more tottering, but mercifully, no undead invasion, the boy arrived at a clearing. A choking malodour made him halt. Vaguely, he could discern the expanse of the burial ground and the rows of grave markers that stood with a defiant challenge of spearing the sky. He knew where he was now, but knowing his direction once more gave him no relief from the sight before him.

There, partially shrouded in thin mist, stood the elephantine figure of the Viking drauger, hoary and sky-confronting, radiating a certain charisma that bespoke the powers too primordial to unravel. It eyed the little boy with lethiferous dominance, as that of an axe-bearing executor before a criminal condemned with decapitation.

A fresh fright stabbed Hibari. Looking at his soon-to-be opponent's form—magnified in stature compared to the last time he had seen it—he was reminded of the literary mention of crushing the victim being one of a draug's favourite assassination methods.

While the newly-turned living corpses had been prospective exorcists trained with fighting lessons, this draugen used to be a warrior drilled with real battles. In spite of the black blood welling from between the rings of his mail armour, courtesy of Isobe's tessen, the warrior did not seem attenuated. Contrarily, hunger amplified the ancestral creature's pugnacity; Fahlmer's forearm could nowhere have been near enough to serve as an appetiser after centuries of starvation.

Hibari gulped. Isobe-sensei was lying unconscious with a strong scent of blood wafting out from him. Wakatsuki-sensei did not look like she had any more strength to stand up, let alone to fight. Rancid, dingy splotches painted the ground. No one could protect the boy. There was still some ten-metre distance between him and the draugen. Maybe he could run.

And then what?

The draugen could chase and overtake him sooner or later. He was near exhaustion; the draugen knew no depletion. Drauger were reputed to be even capable of swimming through solid rock like how sharks cleaved through water. Moreover, disregarding Wakatsuki-sensei when she clearly needed help would be a poor repayment for what she had done for a student like him. He would like to live and make Dino proud, but if he had to perish at the age of eleven, wouldn't Dino at least be prouder if Hibari had died fighting than if he died fleeing?

He knew there was no reason he would last against such a formidable opponent which even two teachers could not tackle. There was no reason to endanger his hedgehog—a familiar could forge a new bond with another exorcist after its master's death. Therefore, bracing himself, he said '_Thanks for everything, Roll_' in his mind without summoning his familiar.

David defeated Goliath with pebbles and a slingshot. But then, Goliath wasn't an undead who felt no pain. Neither was Hibari a virtuous hero who conquered evil in the name of the Lord.

The boy lunged, advancing towards the giant. He jabbed one misericorde, but the draugen's colossal size was by no means slow. It dodged to the side while Hibari was lunging, and, as the exorcist-in-training struggled to maintain his balance, it crushed the child's forearm with its elbow.

Hibari's eyes bulged; terror and agony took over him once more. There would be no time to retrieve the tonfa that was flung several yards ahead. The pain of the fractured bone was enough to make a child scream.

Yet, Hibari Kyouya was _not_ just any child.

He sensed his opponent bending; the draugen's teeth would come to get him. The boy rolled forward, jaw clenched from the pain that seared with every movement he made. Axe swaying, the draugen pursued him. The child dodged with a somersault and landed atop a grave marker. With a single swing of the mighty axe, the undead slashed across the tombstone. A clamorous thud marked the stone's tumble and clouds of dust rose from its rubble, but Hibari escaped upwards.

One of the perks of having some busaw attribute within him was that Hibari could jump higher than most other humans could. As the draugen charged at him, the boy leapt over the creature and landed on its shoulders. He detached the iron helmet away and it hit one of the tombstones with a loud clang. Seconds later, he felt arms gripping around him, and the draugen slammed him to the ground, before the towering figure tried to trample him.

Hibari rolled to the side, wincing—not only were the wounds he had received from Fahlmer stinging at the prickling of the blood-splattered grass, but the fractured bone of his left forearm also burdened him even more. He managed to evade the attack of the swooping draugen just in the nick of time.

As soon as he was back on his feet, Hibari aimed his remaining misericorde blade at the draugen's open mouth. The child pushed, slanting upwards with all his might, as both feet were propelling the ground; every single inch of his nerves was bristling with power just to accomplish this task. The slender osmium blade passed through the narrow gap between the fiend's upper and lower rows of teeth. It smashed through the draugen's sphenoid bone and cerebellum, accompanied by the nasty sounds of bone snapping and brain falling apart, before its blood-stained tip re-emerged at the back of the draugen's skull. The boy felt the sharp pricks of the ghoulish entity's teeth against the side of his right hand, but he didn't care. He wanted to place as many cuts as he could on the draugen's skin. He wanted to hurt the cause of his friends' deaths. He wanted to punish this fiend. It was easier to put the blame on some unearthly creature than on Uboshita who had kicked the abomination's grave marker.

From this distance, the draugen's stench—condensed putridity laced with centuries of mustiness—was so overwhelming that it forced the child to hold his breath. Hibari felt a new, sharp tinge of pain on his back; the draugen's axe was slicing through his shirt and skin. The boy did not falter. It was peculiar how, at times like this, agony and safety had very little value to him. All fears were behind him. Only one thing mattered now: _kill this draugen!_

The oddest, most unexpected event happened then: His opponent pulled the axe from his back and tried to get away from him. Hibari was prepared to press on, but a familiar voice stopped him, 'Leave that draugen be!'

Hibari turned and noticed Wakatsuki holding a crude wax effigy in one hand and a pin in the other. She pierced the wax figurine with the pin, and the draugen sank its axe into its own stomach. Then, she pulled out the pin, only to stab it back to the effigy. The draugen, too, dislodged the axe from its body, leaving a part of his purplish black entrails dangling from the burst stomach. He wasted no time to plunge the rusty blade into his rotten flesh the moment her pin was re-embedded in the small effigy. He let out no cry of anguish, but his body attempted to stop the action that he had no control of.

'Sorry, it took me long enough to obtain the draugen's hair; the Invultuation Spell wouldn't have worked without it.' The teacher told Hibari without letting her gaze off of her victim.

Hibari squinted to see what she meant. Wakatsuki disposed of the doll. Next to her foot, lay the Viking helmet that he had removed from the draugen. Although the boy could not see it accurately from this distance, he suspected that a very thin object coiled and fluttered around the effigy's neck. Then, the moment the wax figure tumbled on the ground, it conflagrated in great gouts of fire and blinding sparks, while the draugen's body perished in the blue flames that came forth from the spell-caster's incantation.

The boy's anxieties were set at rest, for there stood Wakatsuki, her lanky figure towering over the ashes of the creature that had terrorised them all. The teacher's scarlet hair was in a mess and her half-moon spectacles were lopsided. Her fair skin was covered in cuts and bruises, and her face lucidly showed both grief and fatigue. Yet, somehow, she won.

The vaporous mist that had closed in before was now clearing away, leaving the landscape ahead visible for at least half a mile. The raven-haired boy was ambling over to his teacher when he suddenly felt as though his whole body was on fire—his blood felt like molten metal coursing through his veins, distributing the seething magma to every inch of his skin, to every extremity. The excruciation felt unreal, too enormous for the capacity of his small body. He groaned … or perhaps grunted—he couldn't tell; his senses were still gathering themselves. He had to tell Wakatsuki that it was no good saving him, now that he had been infected. Hurry!

'Sensei…'

Hibari's speech broke short; another pain seized his throat, where Fahlmer had injured it. While the cut itself wasn't deep enough to reach his vocal cords, the sheer force of the blade must have galvanised blunt force trauma to the vocal folds, and now his voice was a hoarse whisper at best. What was more, with every passing second, consciousness was seeping away and dregs of sleep subjugated his will of staying awake. The draugen's bite had paralysed him. Or it could have been the she-wolf's. Or both.

Faintly he heard voices in the background. More living corpses were coming—half a dozen of them at least. Ferociously, Hibari struggled against the exasperating constraint of drowsiness. He had to move. He ought to fight. Yet, the irresistible lassitude that had been draping his body was now seeping through his pores. Darkness fell upon the boy…

… Then, he knew no more.

###

For the second time in his life, Hibari experienced swooning. For the second time in his life also, Hibari experienced waking up in an unfamiliar infirmary-type place. This time, however, it was a single-storeyed travel trailer the size of a double-decker bus rather than a school infirmary. Even so, the ceiling—or rather, the hood of the trailer—gave him a hunch that he was inside a Vongola property.

The painted hood showed a different subject from the Namimori infirmary, though. Instead of Nymph Juturna, it depicted an ailing patient being tended by the medicinal deity Aesculapius and his family. The god's consort, Epione, held a pestle and a mortar. Their sons and daughters were helping them: Machaon held a cupping vessel and a piece of cloth; Telesphoros held a speculum; Podalirius held a pair of forceps; Aceso held a scalpel and a hook; Iaso held a catheter and three needles; Aglaea held a basketful of healing herbs, such as rosemary, sage, fennel and elecampane; Panacea held a roll of bandages; and Hygieia held a pair of bronze scissors.

Both sides of the RV were decked with wall-mount foldable bunk beds, totalling fifty sleepers in capacity, though many of them were unoccupied. On the neighbouring bunk beds, lay Wakatsuki-sensei and Isobe-sensei, as well as twelve of his classmates. Much to Hibari's surprise, Uboshita Tomio was among them. Next to one of the beds, a brown-haired man in his mid-thirties handed a glass of water and a pill to the patient and spoke in flawless Italian, 'Now, drink this, my gorgeous Ekaterina. You'll get better soon.'

There was an unmistakably discomforted twitch at the corner of the girl's mouth, but she accepted the glass and the medicine.

Had it not been for the man's white coat and context of his speech, Hibari would have mistaken him for a nightclub host. As it was, the facts were in favour to point out that the speaker was a flirtatious doctor instead.

'Excuse me,' croaked Hibari in Italian, wincing in pain, as he still had not fully recovered from his injured vocal cords as well as several other wounds in different parts of his body. He took extra caution so that his left arm—which was heavily dressed in bandages and put on a sling—did not bump onto any object as he climbed down the ladder; his bunk bed was on the third tier. 'Where am I?'

The doctor turned to face him, though not without an annoyed look. It was plain to see that he would much rather talk to the female student than to Hibari. 'The Varia caravan,' he answered tersely with a Southern Italian accent. 'If you're fine already, get the hell out of here; I don't treat male patients.'

Hibari blinked. Were doctors supposed to discriminate patients based on gender? But more importantly, Varia. Did this mean the European Branch of the Vongola Academy of Exorcism had sent help all the way from Italy?

'My, my, Shamal dear, you've made yourself sound like a sexual harasser by speaking that way.'

Instinctively, the so-called Ekaterina shifted further away from the healer.

But Hibari was more interested to whom the voice belonged to. Coming from behind, it was a male voice, but an overly feminine one, like a drag queen's. Regardless the indoor location, the speaker wore sunglasses. In contrast to the fashionable outfit eclipsing a Canali model's that draped his body, he had his green hair set in a Mohawk style. The tapping of his heeled boots echoed with every step of his leisurely gait as he approached Hibari.

'Hello, sweetie pie. How are you feeling?'

His jaw dropping, Hibari became too speechless to answer. Nobody had called him 'sweetie pie'. _Ever_.

The epicene apparently mistook Hibari's shock for linguistic inaptitude. He repeated his greeting in Japanese.

Goosebumps covered the child's arms and legs, but he managed to force his voice out. 'Fine.' Later, he figured he should at least thank the two medics for saving his life, but for the moment, the shock he gained from the weirdo rendered his brain useless.

The effeminate man did not seem offended by Hibari's stiffness. Instead, he put his hand on the child's shoulder. 'Daawww … you've been through a lot. You must be very frightened, you poor thing. That draugen's infection ended up killing more than half of your classmates and even a teacher. Well, good job that Fahlmer-sensei had managed to send us the emergency signal before she turned into a draug, though.'

At this new piece of information, Hibari remembered a more pressing matter. He took a deep breath and confessed, 'I shouldn't be allowed to live on.'

To this, the sunglassed man let out an overdramatic gasp and put his palms on his cheeks, 'Oh my sweet child, what makes you say such a spine-chilling notion?'

Hibari wished there hadn't been a quiver in his voice as he declared, 'I've been infected.'

His speaking adversary, however, did not seem surprised. 'Oh, I see. You're the one. Now, now, don't you worry, sweetheart.' He dabbed the tip of Hibari's nose, making the child cringe. But the green-haired man chuckled, 'We've taken precaution against such a possibility. You were unconscious when our rescue team arrived, so you didn't know this, but to avoid infection, every survivor from the draug incident was medically checked up. It is to our deepest regret that some of your classmates, who had turned into animated corpses, had to be eradicated on the spot—naturally, their ashes had been collected to be returned to their relatives. However, none of the fifteen survivors in this room was infected, fortunately.

It also happened that Shamal found a unique blood sample which contained three different blood types—draug, busaw and human's. You're either gifted or a very lucky child; not all bodies have the compatibility to receive even as much as one different blood type. Still, you should get plenty of rest. You've got seven sutures, you know. Also, your larynx swells a bit, so bear with liquid diet for the next three days and you'd better restrict the use of your voice for two weeks. 'kay sweetie?'

Three_ different blood types? No wolf's derivative? Is it because Fahlmer-sensei had already become an undead when she bit me that her wolf bite doesn't have any effect? _Hibari took a rather deep breath, bracing himself, and then asked, 'Tell me, uh … doctor, what will become of me.'

'Please,' the man smiled, 'Call me Lussuria. Or better still, Luss.'

The only response Hibari gave was the sign of impatience. Hence, Lussuria continued, 'Aww, no need to rush. You'll be f-i-n-e. If anything, there's a possibility you'll gain the ability of each creature's trait. Of course, it's also possible that none of those creatures' traits affects you. Just get your abilities tested in a few days' time, all right, honey bun?'

'There's no guarantee I won't become a draug and attack anyone, is there?' insisted Hibari. The pain he endured while speaking with swollen larynx was nothing compared to the stab of guilt from thinking he might kill more and more.

Lussuria sighed. 'We spoke to your headmaster and he authorised us to take the necessary precautions should things go out of hand.' Then, he quickly added with a much more cheerful demeanour, 'But you mustn't lose hope. You're in good hands. See, unlike that Shamal over there, I looooove boys.'

Coming from the mouth of a man who referred to himself using the feminine pronoun '_atashi_', the words brought shiver, rather than peace of mind.

Isobe was still in coma when the fourth graders returned to Japan a couple of days later. On the airplane, Hibari caught sight of Wakatsuki staring at the ring on her left hand with tears trickling down her cheeks. Apparently, other students also noticed this. Sawada Tsunayoshi immediately approached the weeping woman and consoled her with words of comfort. As a teacher, Wakatsuki knew better not to burden her students' mind. Therefore, she thanked Tsuna with a smile and went on praising the valour of the surviving students.

'Especially Mukuro-kun,' she remarked and beamed at the child, 'In the commotion of the draugen's attack, you alone cared about Tomio-kun and carried him to safety.'

'Ku fu fu fu.' Rokudo Mukuro emitted a derisive laugh. For lingering seconds, a devious smile twisted his thin lips. 'Sensei, sensei, sensei … why let the one who caused the calamity perish and never see the true damage he himself created? Uboshita-kun needs to hear how parents wail when they learn of their children's timely deaths to get the point through his ever so _considerate_ mind. Yes, death would have been a far too kind compensation if he were not to undergo the helplessness of watching others grow as successful exorcists, while he himself can no longer be one.'

At this account, all attentions were turned to Mukuro in stunned silence, but the heterochromatic-eyed boy had not finished. 'What makes you think I would have even _bothered_ to secure his life, had I not been aware that the draugen drained Uboshita-kun of his spiritual power?'

'Mukuro, you sick bastard!'

Wakatsuki interrupted, 'Hayato-kun, watch your language! And that's enough for you, too, Mukuro-kun.'

The silver-haired Gokudera Hayato, who was Wakatsuki's favourite student, looked rather taken aback at this reproach. On the contrary, Mukuro sneered and replied without the slightest perturbation, 'If you say so, sensei.'

For a while, nobody said a word and the rattling ululation of the plane engine remained the only sound existing. The next day, Uboshita Tomio left the Vongola Academy and did his best not to get in contact with Rokudou Mukuro. Many students hypothesised that Uboshita could have stayed had Mukuro never uttered those words—there was always the Exorcism Support Studies option for those who had not been blessed with high spiritual power.

The rise of the draugen had a different effect to other students. It seemed that, due to locational circumstances, Tsuna, Gokudera, Yamamoto, Ryouhei and Lambo found one another at some point during their battles and joined their hands to defeat the enemies. Their bond of fellowship strengthened ever since.

Numerous students were impressed by Hibari's triumph over Fahlmer, albeit some others doubted his capability of accomplishing the deed had the teacher's both arms been intact. Words of admiration and envious conduct alike instilled disgust within him. How could they consider what he had done as a feat, as though there were any honour in such a disgrace? After a single day in which Hibari had to slay his teacher and classmates occurred, the guilt clung to him. Inside his head, he heard their angry voices, cursing him for taking their lives at such unripe ages, each syllable they rasped sharp as an icicle. He saw the blood of those he had butchered everywhere most days—over the floor of the hallway, on the sheet of paper he was writing and in the dreams that visited his sleep. The rancid odour permeated into the pores of his skin and wouldn't evaporate no matter how many times he had washed himself.

The boy started to ponder: In the event when bloodshed became necessary, wouldn't he feel less guilty killing strangers than killing friends?

During his younger years, Hibari had shown some tendency of social disinclination; now, he shunned affinities altogether. Thus, 'Hibari Kyouya the Psychopath' came into being.

###

The current, sixteen-year-old Hibari yawned. At long last, the Furepe Waterfall came into sight. The waterfall dropped down a steep cliff into the Sea of Okhotsk on the spectacular western coast of the Shiretoko Peninsula. Albeit called 'the maiden's tears', this waterfall was fed by ground water, which surfaced just at its top.

But what was important to Hibari was that the waterfall was no more than twenty-minute-walk away from the Shiretoko Nature Centre—the bus' destination. Soon, the hoggin pathway with wooden railings came into view and the bus skidded into a halt. The bus doors folded open and the thronging passengers around the exit doors disembarked.

Since the bus would not depart for another fifteen minutes, Hibari got off, yawning and stretching as soon as he was outside. The sky was blood-red and the boscages glittered of auburn and orange peel. The prefect went out of the barrier and took a short promenade. Once he reached a place with no human presence in it, he whistled. Less than a minute later, a small, yellow bird flew towards him. This bird had been perching on the bus roof throughout the entire journey, as no ordinary flying speed could catch up with any enchanted vehicle.

As the bird ensconced itself in his outspread palm, Hibari's stern expression softened into an actual benignity that was quite foreign to his disposition—he who shunned the companionship of fellow human beings had a gentle heart towards small animals. 'Hibird,' the boy called affectionately, and the fluffy thing cooed in return. 'Sing me the Namimori Anthem.'

Thus, the bird who had become his pet since the boy had tended his wing injury the previous year, chirped euphonic melody of '_Midori Tanabiku Namimori no_'.

The minutes Hibari spent with Hibird slipped so quickly by, and soon it was time for the boy to alight the bus. When he returned to the spot where the bus had been parked earlier, the ground was empty. He concentrated, focusing his spiritual power to imagine the school bus and chant in his mind, _O space concealed the dimensional rifts, reveal yourself!_

Only then did the black-painted frame of the Namimori bus reappear into view. Although hopping off the bus was easy, getting in was not so. The transport was free of charge, but no mekura could enter, for both the bus and its stop were tangible only to the spiritually powerful individuals with the correct incantation.

In accordance to the standard procedure, the wheelchair lift on the rear entry had been lowered in spite of the absence of disabled passengers; usually Fujimoto-sensei—the disabled exorcist who was reputed to have won his combats by means of telekinesis alone—was the sole user of this facility.

Aboard, the bus was nearly full. The bus, which operated twice daily, transported a small number of commuting school staff and students as well as delivering the mail orders placed over the phone and internet. Since the academy's location was undetected by the mekura, the headmaster set up a special PO Box address for mailing and shopping delivery purposes.

There were no new faces among the passengers, and a vexation started to pass over Hibari. Had his precious time been wasted for picking up an absent teacher-to-be? The boy threw himself at one of the few empty seats near the back and folded his arms across his chest.

The bus driver consulted his watch, and then started the engine. His hand was hovering the gear when five people came running. Two of them were female students carrying bulging shopping bags—although summer vacation had ended the previous week, some people were still in holiday mood—while the other three were male adults with whom Hibari was unfamiliar. The first to enter and the shortest of the three was a middle-aged Caucasian man with dark hair, bushy moustache and square glasses. He was donned in grey salaryman's suit carried what looked like a solicitor's brief. Next hopped in a young man in his early twenties, also white-skinned, with flaxen hair and a big, silly grin upon his face. His smile was too bright compared to the solar disc that glowed flagitiously like ember in the charred sky. He wore a tee-shirt underneath an olive green coat of which hood was lined with fur and a pair of jeans. The last to enter and the tallest passenger on the bus was a red-skinned man in his early-forties with lips so thin and forehead so high, wherein was stamped the features of a Native American. Underneath his sable-hair, he wore such a grim expression that was often associated with funerals. Not that his dark rosewood polo-neck jumper and black trousers helped, in any case.

Of these three, Hibari guessed that the salaryman-type be must be the new teacher. The young man in casual clothing must the new gardener. The old gardener, who was a septuagenarian and one of the few people Hibari sometimes talked to, had complained about how senility had burdened his rheumatic and yearned for retirement. These two sat together four rows in front Hibari's seat. The extra tall, grim-looking man could be a new staff of which post Hibari was unaware of or he could be a parent who was going to have a word the headmaster in regard to his child's problem. He sat two rows behind Hibari's seat.

The bus glided on. Soon, the sun was setting and the evening shadow began to shroud the sanguine sky. With the last glimmer of the sunrays, Hibari caught sight of a bear under a tree at a distance. Usually, when a bear noticed a bus, it would either run from the vehicle or ignore the vehicle entirely. This time, though, it stared for quite a while, and then, looking troubled, withdrew into the deeper part of the forest.

With it, Hibari's nose caught the one odour he loathed most: the scent of the dead. After the second bite, he could block only partially of his keen smell or hearing. A whisper a hundred metre away was perfectly audible, though, if he activated his undead mode, he could hear the said whisper from three quarters a kilometre.

Tearing his gaze away from the window, Hibari took notice of several heads cocking athwart. Odd though the bear's behaviour was, this was even odder. The tilting of the heads looked too uniform, too synchronised to be an unarranged event. The angle looked so mechanical at an exact inclination of a hundred and fifty degree. Rather than looking at the bear or any other object, their eyes were unfocused, as though seeing something far away that no mundane eye could behold.

Slowly, deliberately, those heads returned to the upright angle at exactly the same time, though their pupils remained out-of-focus. Only then did their owners lunge at the persons who sat next to them. Starting with a girl whose finger was bitten off by her brother, screams then became ubiquitous in the bus. There was no notable difference in their physical appearance, but it was irrefutable that they tried to devour their neighbours. Hunger and greed clouded their mind. Nearly half the passengers were crazed by this strange development, as though they had been possessed by some demonic force and they would listen only to one command: Eat!

One fifth-year student tried to gouge her best friend's eye. The student sitting behind her bit his girlfriend's ear off, blood dripping from her lips as she chewed. Even the bus driver was caught in this frenzy, leaving the driver's seat empty in quest for a prey.

The 'salaryman' abandoned his seat to take the steering wheel. The young man who had been sitting beside him extracted a bullwhip from his pocket. One leash from him and five students were instantly knocked out against the windows, the clashing of bodies against glass shaking the bus. Vanished had goofiness from the youth's figure. He was nothing but the manifest of danger. More opponents came at him, jumping from one seat top to another. But the golden-haired man continued to dance the elegy for the fallen.

Hibari stared at the demon who wore the face of a young man. He recognised those movements; they reminded him of the mysterious entity he had encountered once in his childhood on the night when no star awoke. Despite the variation to the pattern, there was a striking resemblance to Dino's technique performed against the mga busaw nine years prior.

_But he looks like a human_, thought Hibari. Then, Dr Akiloye's explanation rang inside his head, _'… while a centaur cannot transmogrify himself into a full man or a full stallion, an aguano can.'_

A hand protruding from a yellow-rimmed sleeve clawed Hibari's head. The prefect sprang before the claw could close around his collar. The student standing nearest from him—a second year student of Advanced Exorcism—spun around and leapt aside, but he was too slow to escape the prefect's swift lunge. One hand closed on his thin neck, and the other, a rock-sturdy fist, jabbed him hard on the throat. A scimitar dropped from the defeated student's hand, robbed of the chance to shine owing to its master inferior battle technique.

With the passing of the minutes, more and more blood spatters decorated the PVC flooring. Nearly all of the bus passengers were infected. The odour, the squalls, the terror, but most of all, the chewing sounds, were enough to reconcile friends and foes. The few individuals who were still unaffected now stood back-to-back, rallying themselves into a team. Even so, they were pushed back into a tiny corner next to the driver's seat. Victims kept falling in the confined space of the bus.

When Hibari tried to fend off the infected from the small group of survivors, a second opponent approached. Blood streaked from her as a portion of flesh was dug out of her forearm, her formerly unblemished skin now revealed some of her ripped sinews that dangled from the carmine cavity. Hibari flung her aside and her body was thrust onto the window. Her eyes flew open and her blood spattered across the prefect's face as he did so. Howling with pain, the sixth-year student crawled to her feet. Seeing Hibari exchange blows with a third opponent, she tried to sink her teeth in Hibari's nape. The prefect swivelled and a swing of tonfa knocked her teeth instead. Hibari's other hand was occupied. The blade of the third student's sai clashed against the tubular body of Hibari's tonfa with a shriek that sent sparks flying into the air. He would have thrust his other sai into Hibari's stomach had the prefect's leg not kicked him away until he collapsed onto his apparent fourth opponent and temporarily incapacitated her from fighting.

A fifth student, lightly affected by the impact of the opponents Hibari had hurled, cringed and dodged before the doom that stalked her. The prefect—the doom incarnate—sidestepped just enough for the blades of her shuriken to miss a breath from his face. Swiftly, before his opponent could respond with a follow-up, he deflected the whirling shuriken and they returned to their mistress, trimming her twin pigtails.

'My hair!' she wailed the moment she probed the chopped locks flanking her head.

_If the infected passengers have not fully lost their emotions_, Hibari deduced, _perhaps there will be a way to restore them to their former selves without resolving to kill them_.

Hibari's next adversary was renowned as the most promising fighter of all the fourth graders. Taking the opening and using the environment to his advantage, the were-salamander back flipped onto the side wall and hung upside down from the ceiling. From his mouth, he blew fire that nearly singed the prefect's face.

The wash of heat from his opposer's attack forced Hibari to scamper one step back. Although exorcist uniforms were flameproof, he had left its helmet back in his locker in the changing room.

Nearer to the front of the bus, three students were running wildly into the aisle towards Hibari's direction while trying to escape from Dino's charge. Dino leapt to Hibari's rescue, his eyebrows rising with anxiety for the boy's safety.

But something else caught Hibari's attention. The passenger directly behind the were-salamander sat calmly, unstirred, unaffected by all the commotion around him. If anything, the gaunt-cheeked Native American man's expression looked more pleased than the time he had hopped into the bus. Furthermore, the scent of death was stronger at the back of the bus, where this man was seated.

Hibari darted to the criminal mastermind, but the were-salamander bounced off the ground and threw himself onto the third grader with an increasingly fast spin, obstructing the prefect's way.

Summoning the busaw and draugen's dormant power within his bloodstreams, Hibari gripped his upperclassman by the ankles, hauled him and hurled the older boy's body at the three runaways. The one at the foremost collapsed the one behind him, but the third student managed to step back—though it was a matter of seconds before Dino's whip greeted him.

That happened to be the last of the students the aguano-in-disguise knocked out. He went to Hibari's direction, intending to help the student fighter, but figured out that his interference would be unnecessary. Spattered with the enemies' blood, the youth before his eyes plucked victory as irrefutably as though Bishamonten himself had descended upon earth.

Another jaw was about to close at Hibari's arm. This one belonged to a bloody-faced girl; a chunk of her nose had been ripped off by an infected passenger. The prefect pushed his attacker's forward and squashed her back with the headrest of the nearest passenger seat. He heard her jaw snapping furiously, but he jumped above the headrest, oppressing his weight in a mighty stomp until the distinct sound of her cracking bones tore the air and her legs ceased their struggles.

'_Jumal_!'

Hibari swerved sideways to see who was screaming. The exclamation came from one of the scanty survivors, an Estonian girl, shrieking for God in her native language, and when her eyes caught his, she screamed in Japanese, 'How could you do that to my best friend!'

The student who stood next to her tried to pacify her, 'Keep it cool, Terje!'

She tried to affirm how things could not be otherwise that they were under such an affliction, but her voice was drowned by the so-called Terje's hysterical cry. Paying them no further heed, Hibari hounded his true prey.

There were no more students at the back of the bus. Darting forward, Hibari drove his tonfa towards the tall man's neck. Yet, his opponent vanished when the steel sliced a millimetre from his nose. For a flicker of moment, just before the man dissipated into particles of air, he turned into a figure so emaciated that it was almost skeletal. His bones threatened to spring loose from the pallid layer holding them within, but his eyes glowed red and his tattered lips emitted the scent of blood. Ill-smelling decay oozed out of every inch of his body, burning the nostrils of every bystander.

_Wendigo!_ Hibari's fists clenched around his tonfas as the last traces of the fiend's maniacal laughter echoed in the air.

_Damn, he escaped! That coward!_

Hibari took out a pen and a notepad from his pocket. There, he jotted down a brief explanation of what had transpired. After signing the bottom of the paper, he tore it from the pad and rolled it. Next, he summoned Roll.

'Relay this message to Akiloye-sensei,' he bade the hedgehog familiar as soon as it appeared, hovering some three feet before him.

Roll took the scroll in his mouth and vanished. Exorcists' familiars were helpful in that way; not only were they able to fight alongside their masters when summoned, but they could also act as messengers in the occasions of mobile phone reception going out of range, like in Namimori.

Hibari looked at his surroundings. Unconscious students lay in heaps; some with bruises, others with cuts. Although some of the credits went to their own teeth, whilst driven by the cannibalistic instinct spread by the wendigo, the more severe damages were his own doing. And Dino's.

The one he had always wanted to meet was right here, before his very eyes. He had no doubt that his younger self would have raced to the blond's side, beaming and eagerly pelting the aguano with questions regarding the tales of his adventures. But as he was now, such an event would be remotely possible.

They stared into each other's eyes, chrysoberyl against obsidian. For one ephemeral moment, Hibari's eyes grew large; Dino hadn't seemed to age at all since they last met. Then, remembering that the aging process of the spiritual beings often took longer than that of humans, the youth donned his mask of stolid indifference once more and turned to find a seat that had not been broken after the fight. He slumped into it, leaning his head back. The jacquard woven polyester of the passenger seat might not be a world-class comfort, but at least, it gave him an excuse not to keep stealing a glance at the soon-to-be teacher.

Hibari also had no doubt that the 'salaryman' with the glasses was actually Romario, in spite of the human and goblin's two feet difference in height. While goblins weren't shape-shifters by nature, with aguano's magic, such purpose was feasible.

The eventide was blighted by cloud and shrouded by fog, with crepuscular frogs trilling outside as the only sound existing.

An hour later, the bus arrived at the Namimori gate, where Dr Akiloye had been waiting. Behind her, were a crew of ghost medics, twenty-four stretchers and a twelve-foot tanktainer engraved with the Vongola crest. As soon as the bus skidded into a halt, two ghosts stormed in with an extended hose from the tanktainer.

Had it not been from the buzzing sound of the sprayer, no one would have been able to detect the existence of the gas. It was a spiritual disinfectant called 'FGV'—the odourless, colourless thing that neutralise the effects of spiritually-induced poisoning and ailments without any hazardous effect even if the inhalers had not been infected with spiritual disease.

'You sent six boys to the infirmary yesterday and now these. Why is it that casualties tend to crowd around you, Kyouya-kun?' Hands on her hips, Dr Akiloye addressed the prefect as soon as the boy stepped out of the bus.

Hibari offered her no verbal reply, causing the Namimori head of medics to shake her head. Any other student would probably make their excuse of 'Hey, not all of them are my fault.' Not so with the antisocial vigilante Hibari Kyouya.

'Oh well, at least none of them dies this time.' The school medic sighed, but she did not berate Hibari further, for she could tell his sincerity through action rather than word: The prefect, along with Romario, helped the infirmary ghosts placing the unconscious students on the stretchers. Dino was going to help too, but Dr Akiloye told him that the headmaster was expecting him.

Dino strolled down the commodious garden of the Namimori Castle until he arrived at the lofty double door that was the entrance to the main building. He gazed up at the cockatrice decoration on the over-door. The creature's eyeballs and rolled to gaze back at him. Next, its mouth opened to enunciate a welcome greeting, '_Okaeri_.'

'I'm back.' Dino beamed and replied in Japanese.

'Your accent still sucks. The "a" and "i" in the middle of "_tadaima_" aren't supposed to be pronounced as a diphthong, you know.'

'Okay, I'll take note on that.' Dino answered with a smile, his tone containing no slightest hint of offence.

Dino headed straight to the headmaster's office after that; however, before he even reached the spiral staircase of the tower, a figure stopped him.

'Ciaosu. It has been nine years since I last saw you in the flesh, Dino. You haven't changed a bit.'

Beaming, Dino greeted the speaker, 'Ah, well. Consider it the side effects of slow aging; one human year is equivalent to one aguano day. Besides, I can say the same thing to you too, Reborn. The curse of the Arcobaleno has its up and downhill, huh?'

WHACK.

Before Dino's reflex reacted, the sole of Reborn's shoe had already landed on his cheek.

The golden-haired man yelped instantly, 'Ouch! That was mean. What did you kick me for?'

Like the graceful landing of a heron on its nest, the Arcobaleno's feet touched on the ground. His movements were effortless and his suit remained wrinkle-free. 'See, your reflex is still slow whenever that underling of yours is not around.'

Dino wiped the shoe mark from his cheek. True, Romario was assisting Dr Akiloye treating the infected students in the infirmary on the opposite end of the Namimori Castle. 'Even so, there was no need to kick me.'

'Did you say something?' asked Reborn, his eyes glinting with mischief.

'No. Nothing.'

'That aside, don't you have anything to report, Bucking Horse?'

Dino's eyes flickered. 'After years of failure, wendigos have now found a way to infect people with some new virus.'

Reborn gave his ex-pupil a silent stare, just as he had always done in times of grave seriousness. If living beings could become animated corpses simply by whiffing the viruses on the streets, what a chaotic place the world would turn to be? And to think that wendigos, who were usually active during winter, actually spread the virus in a hot August day…

A brown-haired boy appeared from the arched entryway and approached them. 'You sent for me, headmaster?'

'Tsuna, this is the new fighting instructor for the Sky Division, Dino Cavallone. Show him around.'

The teenage boy nodded dutifully.

Dino extended his arm in a handshake gesture. 'Hi, although I'm only going to be here for the duration of Luce-sensei's maternity leave, I hope we'll get along well.'

The boy shook Dino's hand and introduced himself as 'Sawada Tsunayoshi'.

'The ancestral house of Sawada? That illustrious generations of exorcists?'

In spite of Dino's enthusiastic smile, Tsuna fidgeted and answered with a tiny voice, 'Um, I'm the tenth generation, but I'm not a great exorcist like my dad.'

Dino gazed at the boy with sincere sympathy; he used to feel that way in his early days. Tsuna, however, fidgeted even more, as though trying to make himself appear smaller.

'Don't worry.' Dino tapped the boy on the shoulder. 'We'll work our way to shape you into an exorcist your parents will be proud of. Let's take it step by step.'

Tsuna beamed at Dino and continued showing him the rooms one by one. Even though Dino had already known each location from studying as an exchange student, those had been four centuries ago. It was amusing to observe what technology had done to change the once had been candle-lit corridors and projector-less classrooms.

After thanking Tsuna for his tour, Dino proceeded to the library. At the entrance, he found himself inside a commodious semi-circular room with tiered wall-cut shelves hosting millions of books. The upper part of the wall was installed with mullioned windows to provide ample lighting. Although the library was open twenty-four hours a day, there was nobody there at this hour of the night, bar the librarian—a _zashiki-warashi_ whose appearance took form of a six-year-old boy with a red face and bobbed hair.

Further down the library was an inner chamber functioning as an archive. Inside it, were row upon row of shelved scrolls, tomes and incunabula covering various scriptures as well as the students' records.

_That kid wore red-hemmed sleeves_, Dino raked his memory. _He must be a third-year student of Advanced Exorcism_.

Dino approached the cabinet where the placement test video recordings were stored. The DVDs containing the test that took place three years prior should be located in the top drawer. The next minute, his fingers were flicking through a row of DVD cases.

'Ah, here it is.' He pulled one case with the title: _2009 Placement Test._

Since the archive was not equipped with seating area, Dino returned to the library. In the middle of the semi-circular room stood long oaken desks, decked with individual chairs, headsets and separators for the readers' privacy. There he sat and popped the DVD into the multimedia player.

The touchscreen displayed a menu listing the students' names on a plain black background. As the list was arranged alphabetically according to the _gojuuon_—the order of Japanese _kana_ characters—Dino kept scrolling down until he found the 'hi' section. He tapped it and subsections were revealed. After more scrolling downs, he found 'ba'. He repeated the process with 'ri'. After that, only one name appeared, so he didn't need to scroll down for the student's given name.

Hibari's first test, the written exam for the Storm section placement, went smoothly. The boy did not cheat or make any attempt to do so. By the end of it, he received a decent seventy-seven out of a hundred score. From the next part onwards, each test was held individually—which explained why it took the whole week to get the whole school tested. Having finished the _ushi-oni_ or ox demon in a single strike, earned him ninety-six points out of a hundred for the Rain section duel exam. The third test, which involved healing, became Hibari's Achilles' heel; his score was the bare minimum of sixty-one points, while the passing point was sixty. The wounds he tended stopped bleeding, but did not recover fully. However, he did better on the Thunder section: although it took him a rather long time, he managed to purify the cursed chair that emitted tentacles and strangled its occupier to death. 'Points awarded: eighty-four' appeared on the bottom right screen.

None of those tests came as an awe-inspiring as Hibari's placement test for the Cloud Section. When twenty-five animated skeletons appeared before him, he opened his tonfa compartments. With the sways of his spiked flails, he had smitten all his opponents down before they could even lay their bony fingers on him. Next, rose a _gashadokuro_—a colossal skeleton fifteen times the size of grown man whose body was composed of the bones from those who had died of starvation. The gashadokuro extended its arm, attempting to grab Hibari's head, but the boy had destructed its osseous structure before it could even lift its fingers.

When the timer of recording displayed fifty-eight seconds, Hibari came out of the examination room bearing a placid expression, as though challenging: Where was the thrill from facing opponents with no real threat, fully knowing that a member of school staff would rescue him should he be in danger? A full mark, plus fifteen bonus points from defeating the gashadokuro, was awarded to him.

'The pattern of that kid's movements … wasn't that a variation of my _Salto Volante Veloce Come Luce_?' Dino let out an appreciative whistle. To think that he had only performed it once in front of a seven-year-old boy at the brink of death, and later it turned out that the said boy had mastered it flawlessly by the age of thirteen. As an ex-exchange student who had spent no more than three months in Namimori, Dino did not have any record, save for the photograph of the entire class in which he had been admitted. Hibari must, therefore, have learnt the technique based on memory alone.

'What a monster I've chanced upon!' Licking his lip, Dino grinned. 'I wonder if he was overly conscious to use those flails in front of me because they're kinda close relatives to whips.'

Dino continues the recording to Hibari's Mist section test. The boy would have obtained a perfect score had he not charged at the demon straightaway without analysing the situation first. What a mind manipulator was supposed to do was to deal with illusions presented by the demon, but Hibari did not even give the demon the chance to show its ability. He scored ninety points for that test.

A similar, but worse, situation occurred in Hibari's Sky section placement test. The test from this section gave Hibari seventy-five points. The _konaki-jiji_, who took the appearance of a frail old man, lamented about how senility had brought him backache and pleaded to a gullible passer-by to carry it home in a pig-a-back manner. After the victim complied, it gradually became heavier and heavier until its enormous weight sank its carrier into the ground, burying the victim alive. Rather than rescuing the hapless victim, Hibari crushed him along with the mischievous konaki-jiji. Even though dummies known as 'kairai', instead of real demons and humans, were employed in all the tests, it was plain to see that Hibari showed no concern for others' safety as long as he won over his enemy.

Dino sighed.

The next day, the dining hall was bustling with breathless murmurs of 'ooh' and 'ah', for Dino was having lunch, surrounded by his new students. With such a charming look and an amiable character, Dino Cavallone gained his popularity faster than any teacher could. Numerous female students ogled on him as though a pop idol were coming to visit Namimori. They would probably squeal in a more hysteric mode had they not kept in mind that a certain prefect might glare at them.

By length, the dining hall was roughly twice the size of a rugby field. Crystal candelabras hung from its stellar-vaulted ceiling. In it, rows of long wooden tables were arrayed symmetrically. One table at the corner was designated for the food buffet, showcasing international dishes ranging from pot-au-feu to moussaka. All the other tables were equal, as the staff members were expected to blend in with the students.

To Dino, eating with such a large crowd was a pleasant change. Only Romario had kept him company hitherto, and the goblin did not tell many jokes. Today, the goblin was running an errand for him, and his absence marked Dino's ineptitude. The crumbs of chicken kiev and blots of chocolate ganache sprinkled Dino's cheeks.

However, it occurred to the new teacher that one table at the far end of the hall had a peculiar trait. Each table was meant to accommodate thirty sitters, but that particular one was occupied by Hibari Kyouya alone, even though the neighbouring tables were nearly full.

Therefrom, Dino asked the female student who sat nearest to him, 'Say, why nobody sits near that boy?'

'Er, he prefers being left alone, sensei.' She would not meet his eyes while delivering her answer. Moreover, the reply itself came after a rather sharp intake of breath.

Not failing to notice how uneasy the girl had become at the mention of Hibari, Dino decided not to pursue the subject.

At the end of the day, Dino visited the pond in the garden. This pond was so extensive in size that it could pass as a small lake. The night firmament was reflected in the pond, forming a sea of stars that sparkled silently.

Crouching by the pond, the xanthochroid man released a small turtle from the strap encircling his neck. As soon as the sponge turtle plunged himself into the water, his tennis ball-sized body grew into the size of a four-person camping tent. With a contented smile, Dino watched his pet, Enzo, swimming around.

The next minute, the aguano spoke in a low volume, almost like speaking to himself, 'You've been watching me for quite a while now. Do you suspect I'm up to no good?'

A shadowy figure rose from the domed roof of the library, which was the nearest edifice to face the pond. Then a voice, no less quiet than Dino's, responded, 'If you are, I'll bite you to death.'

Dino smirked; his adversary's disrespect was not totally unexpected. With one effortless leapt, he landed on the same rooftop. Hibari greeted him with a fighting stance, tonfas poised menacingly at both arms in a wordless declaration that the newcomer was not welcomed to join him on the roof.

However, rather than cowering away, Dino opened a conversation, 'I could ask you the same, don't you think? You're up here, all alone, when other students are in bed; how do I know you aren't trying to sneak in?'

Hibari's eyes narrowed. Then, without relaxing his tonfa grips, he replied, 'It's a prefect's responsibility to check the security of the school ground.'

'At this hour?' Dino's tone was light and teasing—the type Hibari hated most to hear.

'I'm semi-nocturnal,' growled the prefect. 'Contrarily, _you_, aguano, are a diurnal creature. Leave!'

Dino's lips curved upwards. 'Suppose I disagree?'

Hibari let a swing of his tonfa speak.

'Say, Hiba—' Just then, Dino decided a better way to tease the youth whilst dodging the attack. 'Ah, _Kyouya_, do you treat all teachers like this?'

A moment of surprise lit Hibari's eyes; only a handful of people had dared to call him by his given name for the past few years. Hibari no longer cared for words of reply; he charged on and on, the metallic swishes of his weapons slicing the night air.

Hibari dove at Dino, but his trusted tonfas hit empty air. There was a crack in the air and his foot dragged from under him, his ankle snapped round painfully, caught by his opponent's whip. He sprawled out on his face. As he tried to push himself up, the leather snaked under his neck, while the new teacher's knee pressed onto his back. At Dino's yanking, the bullwhip grew tighter and tighter, cutting into the boy's flesh. Hibari gritted his teeth, guarding the escape of a groan from his lips as a series of pains settled in.

Refusing to appear weak, the boy defied the weight that was still bearing down on his back by lumbering unsteadily to his feet. His attacks kept coming, intent and lethal, driving hard in a flurry of strikes that kept Dino too busy parrying to make any counters of his own. Sweat rained down his chin. His arms were straining to hold off his simultaneous attacks with the twin tonfas. Yet, his prodigious efforts came to no avail, for the assaulter was always quick to elude. The prefect could hardly breathe now. After a few steps of tottering, he fell backwards.

'My, my, if you're _this_ agitated just from a little challenge of authority, you've still got a lot to learn, Kyouya.' He flashed his annoyingly perfect rows of white teeth.

_Where did he get all that stamina? _Panting, Hibari scrabbled to his knees once more and lunged; he'd do anything within his power to wipe that simper off Dino's face. Even in the blurring instant of his rush, the taller man still had the time to parry his attacks. He was scant millimetres from the teacher's face when the older of them jerked his wrist. The blade sliced past the aguano's ear. A quick swoop of leather pushed the steel tonfa out of line and saved him from what would otherwise be a mortal wound. Hibari disengaged his tonfas from Dino's whip and scrambled back.

Again Hibari charged. Again Dino deflected his attack. Other than the one time Hibari managed to ram his knee into his opponent's muscled stomach, the swiftness of his movements remained inadequate to make Dino drop his bullwhip.

'On a lighter note, I'd be happy to listen if you have anything to discuss, since it seems to me that you have great reluctance to share with your schoolmates.'

'I'm old enough to solve my own problem,' snarled the prefect.

More cracks and clangs filled the air. No creature alive had ever intrigued Hibari this powerfully before. It forced him to look at Dino in a new light; yet, his lips did not move to announce the harboured admiration. No orator was needed when feral beauty had done its persuasion.

The next morning, Hibari awoke on the library roof with the sun glaring down on his face. He opened his eyes, and stabbing lances of light pierced his eyeballs. But that was not the worst part. A green coat blanketed him, the fur lining its hood tickling his throat. From the coat's pocket, a sheet of paper was poking out. On it was scribbled a note:

_'Tonight, same place, same time.'_

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. Exchange

Many thanks to _Leona-Aurelia_ & _AquaticMoose_ for beta-reading this chapter.

* * *

In this fic, USA doesn't exist; in its stead, the American continent comprises of a single country called 'Britannia', with Pendragon as its capital city. Also, the mountain background of Pendragon seems to be geographically corresponding to that of Phoenix, Arizona. Yes, readers, this is a crossover and all the info regarding the country's past regents derive from Code Geass Wiki. Several topographical names are my invention, but they are all based on the names of the actual places related to the Arthurian Legend.

_Katara_ (a.k.a. _suwaiya, kaţţāri, katyaar, kaţāra _or_ kataar_) = a Hindi push dagger characterised by its H-shaped horizontal hand grip, which results in the blade of the sword sitting above the user's knuckles

_Kappa _= the Japanese freshwater imp who love cucumber and typically have dark green skin

_Mizuchi_ = Japanese water dragon

_Amefurikozou _= rainfall kid, a weather spirit with the power to make the rain fall

_Suijin_ = Shinto water deity

_Ame-warashi_ = the Japanese rain sprite

_Shinai _= a blunt-edged bamboo sword used for practice and competition in kendo

_Mamuthones_ = in the Mammoiada Village, Italy, men who transform into ibexes during the night

_Janas_ = in the mountains of Supramonte, Italy, female fairies who come out in their human form at night, while disguised as dragonflies during the day

Cloud seeding = intentional weather modification to change the amount or type of precipitation falling from clouds, by dispersing shells or rockets containing silver iodide particles, salts and dry ice into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud; the calculated amount of icy particles freeze drops in the clouds, make the drops continue growing and eventually fall out of the clouds (in other words, it can increase / decrease rain, snow or hail)

_Fext_ = a mythical undead creature in Slavic mythology who is said to be invulnerable unless shot by glass bullets

_Tabouret_ = a low stool in the shape of a drum

Dacquoise = a dessert cake made with layers of almond and hazelnut meringue and whipped cream or buttercream

* * *

'Barallon, that won't do! Remember, we live in the days when something more than brute strength counts as a requisite in combats,' rebuked the fight instructor, her long, midnight blue hair fluttering behind her as she swept past the group of fourth year students of Exorcism Studies.

These students had been paired for sparring purpose and she hopped from one group to another, correcting their techniques. The spars were normally interdepartmental; however, today, there was a staff meeting between the Heads of Departments, who also happened to be the fighting instructors of the respective divisions. The lack of staff problem resulted in the combined training of the seven divisions under the supervision of one teacher.

It was one of those scalding, dog days—the last few days before autumn started—and the sun-baked training ground was scorching under their boots. Some students gazed longingly to seek shelter under the encumbrances of foliage of the ancient cypresses at the edge of the enchanted forest surrounding the Namimori Castle.

Eyes seeking left and right, Lal Mirch resumed her inspection on other students. 'And Shokirov, your guard is too high; you're giving Ghannouchi a chance to strike your bowel.'

The boy with a cornrows haircut known as Shokirov lowered his guard as instructed, but his teacher's attention had already been diverted somewhere else.

'What's with that half-arsed attack, Sawada?!' With that, she swooped down and whacked Tsuna in the back of the head. Still clutching at his stomach, the poor boy mumbled a weak apology. Yet, she continued to berate him, 'You actually _let_ Miura knee you in the gut; what were you thinking?!'

'B-but sensei … she's a girl.'

Hearing this, Lal gripped Tsuna's collar and yelled, 'FUCK OFF!'

Many students halted their spars, directing their eyes towards the combat instructor. As much as they knew of her aggressive nature, should a teacher be tolerated for cursing around students? She, too, realised this a few seconds after the deed was done. Her blazing eyes calmed down and her voice assumed a quieter tone when she spoke next, 'Armed soldiers ought not attack civilians, especially women, elderly and children. But once a woman makes her choice to fight alongside men, they are not to be treated as some petty dolls placed upon a shelf! Rather than acknowledging your sister-in-arms' efforts, you insult her with not fighting her with your best.'

Guilt was not the only thing there was in Tsuna's expression; hesitation was in it, too. How could he attack Miura Haru with a more serious approach? She was, after all, the best friend of Sasagawa Kyoko—the girl with whom he had secretly been infatuated with for over two years now. Making Kyoko hate him because he inflicted an injury upon her best friend was definitely not on Tsuna's list. Even now Kyoko cast a rather worried look over Ryouhei's shoulder, as her overprotective brother wouldn't let her pair up with anyone else to keep her out of harm's way.

'You too, Sasagawa Ryouhei,' Lal Mirch's sharp look was directed to the pair next to Tsuna. 'If you hold back your power too much out of fear of injuring your precious little sister, she can never develop the necessary abilities to become an excellent exorcist.'

At this reproach, Ryouhei fidgeted, but Kyoko assured him, 'Onii-san, I'm fine. Don't hesitate to attack me with all you've got.'

'Everyone, resume your spars!' ordered the teacher.

Within seconds, the bone-jarring scraping of metals lacerated the still air. Students were back to facing each other. None of these combatants, however, took the battle as seriously as Hibari did. Pratibha Varghese came in toward his side, but hit only air. Her rhenium _katara_ swung low to take out his leg, but he deflected it towards the ground. She intended to pull away, but Hibari took her under the chin and shoved her back so hard she was thrown off her feet and hit the chain-link fence three yards behind her.

The prefect gave her five seconds of reprieve by ambling leisurely towards her. When he was six feet away, he asked, 'Can you stand up?'

Varghese held onto the diamond lattice of the fence for support and slowly rose to her feet. 'I think so.'

'Let's continue then.'

She groaned, her downturned eyes sought him pleadingly. 'Can't you accept my white flag?'

'Haven't you noticed that sensei has not issued the instruction to cease?' he answered with a tone of indifference.

'But this is pointless,' she whined, 'We both know I can never beat you. Why don't you go find someone who can match you in strength?'

'All students have been paired up; there's no one left.' He lunged at her, preparing to strike. The Hindi girl closed her eyes and held her weapon in front of her face for the only form of protection she could think of.

'Ku fu fu fu. That's no longer the case, Mr Namimori Disciplinary Committee Chairman. Now that my sparring partner is out of action, I shall be delighted to deliver you a similar ending.' The baritone timbre was mellow, yet derisive—much _too_ derisive for Hibari's liking. Varghese reopened her eyes because she wanted to know who had spoken, and encountered a trident blocking the tonfa that nearly crushed her bones.

'Rokudou Mukuro,' hissed the skylark, voice consumed with pure hatred. There was something, something about this boy that shared the common trait as the living dead—the mga busaw that had nearly devoured him and the draugen that had cornered him to kill his teacher and classmates. The illusionist's presence alone sufficed to disconcert him.

A few metres behind Mukuro, Maxime De Clercq was staring into space. Seeing that the Belgian boy suffered no noticeable physical damage, Hibari instantly suspected that Mukuro had fiddled with his victim's mind. In fact, at this stage, it would no longer be a surprise if De Clercq were to claim that he had been a hamster. The absence of noise from the illusionist's combat was likely to be the reason the fight instructor had not discovered anything wrong with De Clercq amidst the plurality of students.

Hibari's tonfa slashed the new opponent as soon as Varghese scurried out of the way. Mukuro's tantalum trident blocked, blocked again, and nearly missed blocking the third assault before he had a chance to thrust his trident forward. Hibari raised his tonfa in time to parry the blow. Sneering at Hibari, Mukuro glided forward with the fluidity of water as he came towards him. However, true to his reputation, Hibari Kyouya was not an opponent to be trifled with.

A tremor of excitement rippled through the crowd, who neglected their own spars and turned their attention to Hibari and Mukuro's fight. Hibari had to fall back a step; his tonfa barely came up in time to save his neck. With a flicker of devilry in his eyes, Mukuro lunged again, taking the advantage of the longer range of his weapon to knock one of Hibari's tonfas out of the prefect's hands.

'Enough!'

At the sound of Lal Mirch's voice, the whole class stopped moving. Leon the chameleon—Reborn's familiar—appeared next to the teacher, bearing a piece of paper. After reading the note, she announced, 'Sawada Tsunayoshi, Gokudera Hayato, Yamamoto Takeshi, Lambo Bovino, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Hibari Kyouya, Rokudou Mukuro. The seven students whose names I've just mentioned are expected in the headmaster's office.'

###

Earlier, in the room below the office, a staff meeting had been taking place.

'I've received a word from Byakuran,' Reborn began. A white envelope with unsealed flap, embossed with the Vongola Coat of Arms in gold foil, lay next to his elbow on the large, heptagonal table. The window behind his seat was left open, allowing the afternoon breeze to caress his exposed nape.

'Headmaster of the Millefiore?' hissed Verde, the Head Department of the Thunder Section. Millefiore, a.k.a. the Vongola Academy of Exorcism, American Branch, was said to be the strongest of all the Vongola Academy of Exorcism branches worldwide.

The blue pacifier hanging from Colonello's neck glowed faintly, as it always did when its owner was in a state of agitation. The Head of Department of the Rain Section voiced his concern, 'Hey, what does he want?'

To this, Reborn interlocked his hands and rested his chin upon the twines of his fingers. 'Staff and Student Exchange Programme.'

'Oh, shit!' Skull swore as his palm slapped his forehead, his purple Cloud Pacifier rattling slightly against the metal button of his shirt. 'It has been ten years already since our last exchange with the American branch.'

In order to perpetuate the good relationship between one branch and another, every year, seven students—one to represent each element—accompanied by one supervisor, who was usually the head of a department, would be selected to experience studying in another branch for three months. Given there were five branches of Vongola Academy in the five continents, each two schools were bound to come to the same turn every decade.

'Dammit, I swear I won't let them laugh at our face again this year, even if that's the last thing I do!' Colonello fisted the air so enthusiastically that he rose from his seat.

'It's not going to be easy.' Fon threw his braided hair behind his shoulder, and then his fingers came together before his mouth, crossing themselves together. 'Those Millefiore candidates aren't called the best for nothing. The Australian and African branches have been eager to overtake those Americans, but they have never succeeded during the past two centuries. Not. Even. Once.'

'Yes, even the Central Branch in Europe acknowledges America's might. _The_ Varia! Can you believe it?' said Skull.

At the mention of 'Varia', the Head of the Department of the Mist Section twitched a little. Viper had once joined the group of elite exorcists under the code name 'Mammon' and parted from his ex-colleagues with neither good nor bad terms. His replacement, a genius youngster who was reputed to be obsessed with anuran lore, was quite well received by the rest of the team.

Headmaster Reborn cleared his throat, which caused the off-topic squabbling to cease. 'We all share Colonello's sentiment, but we need to be realistic.'

'Yeah, _realistic_,' Skull echoed sarcastically. 'We should start by teaching our students not to make complete idiots of themselves too damn much.'

'Hey, hey, Skull, aren't you being way too pessimistic? Namimori students aren't that pathetic!' protested the Rain Arcoballeno.

Verde tapped some buttons of his laptop in rapid successions, and then sighed. 'According to my statistics, none of our final year students exceeds the standard.'

'But no rule states that the selected exchange students are necessarily from the final year,' Mischief gleamed in Reborn's eyes as he made his point.

A silent apprehension made its way across the meeting room. In the past, they had always appointed senior students in the assumption that they possessed the most knowledge and experience. Yet, this year, the headmaster seemed to aim for students with promising potentials rather than those with a set limit, regardless of their length of education.

Fon made a low humming noise before covering his tiny mouth with the sleeves of his red _cheongsam_. 'In that case, I propose that Gokudera Hayato shall represent the Storm Section.'

His initiative was quickly followed by the other Head of Departments. Colonello chose Yamamoto Takeshi for the Rain Section; Reborn, Sasagawa Ryouhei for the Sun Section; Verde, Lambo Bovino for the Thunder Section; Skull, Hibari Kyouya for the Cloud Section; and Viper, Rokudou Mukuro for the Mist Section.

'_The_ "generation of miracle", eh?' remarked Viper.

The other Arcobaleni smirked. Those who knew about the students' survival against the draugerne five years prior would knew that this term might was not an exaggeration. All those students were currently in their third year of Advanced Exorcism.

Reborn peered at the other end of the table and spoke, rather loudly, 'As for the Sky Section, I trust you will favour Sawada Tsunayoshi, Dino?'

The golden-haired deputy of the Head of Department for the Sky Section snapped his eyes open. 'Huh? O-oh … yeah, sure.'

'I don't recall aguani being nocturnal.'

'No, of course not. I stayed up late last night because I had to mark a pile of students' essays.' Dino quickly wiped the traces of saliva from his chin. As he did so, Reborn noticed a fresh cut on Dino's palm.

'A poor excuse for sleeping so soundly during staff meeting in such a broad daylight.' A knowing peer accompanied the headmaster's reply. As much as he detected no lie in the teacher's words, that didn't mean Dino couldn't start the essay marking at earlier time. Instead, the aguano had spent his evenings to train a certain wild skylark.

Dino fiddled his fingers, but dared not talk back. Reborn had always been—and would remain—his worst nightmare.

'Still, even with such a lamentable conduct, no one has exceeded your graduation exam's score for the past four hundred years…' Reborn drawled, but Dino gulped; the aguano didn't like where this conversation was going.

'… which thus leaves us with no reason for not choosing _you_ as the supervisor of the seven students who would be sent to Millefiore in September,' Reborn concluded with a triumphant grin.

###

Nearly all students from the Sky Division, as well as several more from other divisions, were upset that the temporary combat instructor was the one to go. Some even petitioned to have their classes cancelled so that they could see Dino off at the airport.

The Millefiore guide sent to pick up Dino, Romario and the seven students was a man in his late thirties with hazel eyes, hawk nose and hairy arms. He cheerfully waved the moment he caught sight of Dino and the seven students emerging from the Live Animal Border Inspection Post exit—because Enzo the turtle had to be checked. They lumbered to the parking lot outside the arrival hall of the airport and climbed into the designated van.

The guide took his seat next to the driver. It seemed that this guide picked up too much pirate's accent from stereotypical movies, making his speech more difficult to comprehend for the majority of the Namimori students, whose English aptitude were so-so. When Lambo mentioned this, the guide blinked.

The next second, his chevron moustache turned into chinstrap beard, his height grew ten inches taller, his hawk nose remoulded itself into a turned-up one, his rust-coloured hair became white. To top it all, now he talked like a seventy-year-old Shakespearean theatregoer. 'Good morrow, ye disciples from a faraway land!'

Six out of seven exchange students stared at the guide wide-eyed. Only Lambo was calm enough to comment, 'Has it ever occurred to you that your companions may mistake you for a stalker who invites yourself to their group and then strike you, just because you shape-shift without prior warning?'

The guide's droopy eyes twinkled, but then, he merrily announced, 'A-ha! One of my kind; I can sense it in your aura. You're no ordinary child. In fact, I doubt that this appearance of yours corresponds with your real age.'

'Yeah, yeah, but seriously, cut that English from four or five hundred years ago crap. It drives us nuts.'

He smiled and made a bow, just as a circus ringleader would do at the end of a much-applauded performance. 'Aðalbjörg Hafsteinsdóttir, at your service.'

Dino asked, 'Isn't that an Icelandic female name?'

'Yes,' confirmed the guide, 'That's my actual gender and nationality.'

'EH?! Changing to the extreme you go there!' exclaimed Ryouhei in thickly Japanese-accented English.

'Why, thank you.' The guide evinced a proud smile while guessing that the foreign student probably meant to say: 'WHAT?! Such extreme changeovers you've got there!'

Sweat dropped from the side of Dino's forehead, for he had not expected any of the exchange students' linguistic skills to be _this_ bad. Even so, he then comforted himself with the thought that at least they were trying their best to speak rather than abstaining themselves from communicating in English.

'But aren't you tired changing from one form to another? I mean, doesn't shape-shifting … uh … consume—what is it called in English … ah, yes—spiritual energy?' Yamamoto asked, taking his sweet time to convert the words into English from Japanese—the level of English lessons in Japanese middle schools could help only that much.

'That's quite true with the case of most other shape-shifters. In my case, unfortunately, my form automatically changes every few minutes. In the eyes of those who don't know me, this trait sure looks like a show off, but if I want to stop it, I have to do it by deliberation and control my spiritual energy—which is even more painstakingly exhausting.'

Like any other Vongola property, the van looked like an ordinary vehicle from the outside, but its interior hood was illustrated with mythical subject. As schemed by the trickster deity, Inktomi, a man named Tokahe brought his kith and kin from below ground to populate the earth. Exceptionally well-made down to last detail, the vinyl sticker was of meticulous execution and showed the characteristic grace and vigour of Vongola's style. Its depiction of the bumpy rocks of the Wind Cave in the Black Hills, from which the thronging humans emerged, couldn't get more realistic.

Nevertheless, what pleased the students most was the portable mini fridge that hosted a wide range of refreshments to soothe their parched throats. Even so, Lambo yawped, 'Ugh, how come you don't have any milk?!'

'Lambo!' Tsuna reprimanded the Thunder exorcist-in-training, well aware that this was a mere whim to embarrass the Britannian guide; the Afro boy always opted for grape juice whenever opportunity presented itself.

'Well, most teenagers nowadays prefer carbonated drinks or juices,' answered Hafsteinsdóttir with an apologetic smile.

Even as he spoke, the guide's form changed again. This time, he had a soul patch beard, was reduced fifteen inches shorter and two decades younger than his previous form. Even his ethnicity changed into African, complete with a Nubian nose and thick lips. With the distinctive accent of a rapper, he started a narration of the American socio-culture.

'As you all have been aware of, the whole American Continent is the expanse of a single country called the 'Holy Britannian Empire'. It traces its cultural origins back to the attempted invasion of the British Isles by Julius Caesar in 55 BC, which was fended off by the local Celtic tribes under the leadership of King Eowyn—the antecedent of the imperial family.

The marking of our history started from the failure of the American Revolutionary War two and a half centuries ago, which is known as "Washington's Rebellion", where George Washington and the Continental Army suffered a crippling defeat at the battle of Yorktown, at which point control of the American colonies by Britannia was assured.

As the Age of Revolutions reached its peak, numerous European monarchies were overthrown. A decisive victory at the Battle of Trafalgar granted Napoleon access to invade the British Isles and occupy London. Queen Elizabeth III, who died childless, nominated Ricardo von Britannia as her successor on her deathbed.

By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the defeated remains of the absolutist aristocracy of the British Isles had then retreated to their colonial holdings in America following the loss of their original homeland. They embraced a national ethos of revanchism, which thus resulting in Holy Britannian Empire, while descending from the British Empire but geographically occupied the American continent.

After the passing of the ninety-ninth emperor, Lelouch vi Britannia, our government has evolved from absolute into constitutional monarchy. The Upper House is the House of Lords, which represents the interests of the aristocrats, while the Lower House is the Senate, and there are also State Legislatures from which Senators may be drawn. At present, the reigning ruler is Empress Nunnally vi Britannia, though the majority of the political diplomacy lies in the hands of the Prime Minister, Prince Schneizel el Britannia.'

Thankfully, the guide didn't miss the exchange students' yawns. He grinned and immediately changed the topic from history to places of interest, 'Let's see … the most famous tourist attractions in this country are Disneyland and the Universal Studio, but they are not located on our route. Ah, but Saint Darwin's Park is!'

'Saint? Is this a different Darwin from the one who came up with the Theory of Evolution?' asked Tsuna.

'No, no.' Hafsteinsdóttir smiled. 'The Holy Britannian Empire utterly embraced Social Darwinism beyond a national ethos and mentality; it's something akin to a state religion. It's for this reason that Charles Darwin is referred to as "Saint Darwin".'

The guide turned her head at the window and pointed at a huge enclosure at the far right. 'See that Ferris Wheel, those roller coasters and those towers? That's Saint Darwin's Park.'

'Funny, that place seems more like an amusement park rather than a pilgrimage destination,' commented Gokudera.

'Well, it _is_. Initially, there was just the Oswestry Spring, but then, the mayor thought up of a way to boost the economy by turning it into an amusement park. Inside, you'll find the Darwin Museum, which hosts this empire's largest collection of Darwin-related objects. There's also the Aquillusion Show every weekend: A thirty-minute spectacular display of colourful aurora laser lights and musical fantasy swirl through the night sky over the tranquil water of the Oswestry Spring. The story varies from one show to another, but they are usually fairy tale or legend adaptations.'

The exchange students looked unimpressed; after all, they had a similar laser show aurora fantasy attraction against the colossal ice-floe backdrop of the Shiretoko Peninsula.

Soon, the bus passed a lenticular truss bridge, which was a unique architectural structure composed of counterbalancing arches to combine the benefits of both suspension and arch bridges. The water beneath the bridge shimmered in the sunlight. A kingfisher swooped low near the water surface, hoping to catch the trout that leapt through the whitecaps. The sun seemed to burn hotter with each passing minute and the increase in temperature made Lambo start fanning himself with a pamphlet.

'We're going to pass the desert area soon,' explained the guide while lowering the air-conditioner's temperature.

Along the Bedegraine border, aeons of upheavals and erosion had fashioned tranquil canyons as well as stone tables. Myriads of bizarre rock formations, great and small, were made in different coloured sandstone rock layers—cream, fawn, sienna and terra cotta—extended in a narrow band for over thirty miles along the plateau rim.

'Whoa, there are extremely loads and loads of sand there!' remarked Ryouhei, again with the Japanese accent so thick that it sounded as though he had said, 'road and road' instead of 'loads and loads'.

Gokudera, who sat in front of the older boy, growled, half pissed off and half embarrassed by his companion's bumpkinly manner, 'What do you expect, turf head? It's a desert!'

'Gokude—'

'WHAT?!' snapped the hazel-eyed boy. However, he hastily softened his tone as soon as he learnt who was speaking. 'Sorry, Tenth; I thought you were that blockhead.' He pointed to the left, at Yamamoto's direction.

'I-it's fine. I wasn't going to mention anything important anyway.'

Reverently, he implored, 'No, Tenth; please don't hold back anything from me.'

'Uh, okay. I was just amazed that there are so many plants in the desert other than cacti. I wonder if you could tell me the name of those pinkish white flowers with long spikes.'

Gokudera's gaze followed Tsuna's pointing finger, and then he promptly answered, 'It's called "gaura". It's a perennial plant of which flower season was summer to autumn, with fast growth rate under full or partial sun with low water.'

'Wow, you're knowledgeable as always, Gokudera-kun,' complimented Tsuna, who was genuinely impressed.

As was common with the Japanese gesture of pleased shyness, Gokudera placed his hand behind his head, a smile gracing his lips.

'Hey, Gokudera, what about those green, stick-like thingies?' This time, the query really did come from Yamamoto.

The short-fused boy snatched the sports magazine from Yamamoto's hand and, after rolling it into a baton, used it to smack the jet-haired boy's head. 'Those are ocotillos, you brainless oaf! Can't you see that they aren't exactly rigid like sticks? Their spiny, whip-like, straight branches angle outward from the base!'

'Ouch!' Yamamoto rubbed his head, where Gokudera had just hit him. But then, he grinned again. 'So, what's an ocotillo?'

'Argh! It's a thorny candlewood, you dimwit!'

Yamamoto looked like he was about to ask what a candlewood was, but then his mouth just hung open without articulating any word whereas his eyes were transfixed on the window. Near one creosote bush-covered stone table bisected by deep canyons, there was a high rock that was cut through its middle, forming a natural sculpture akin to an arch bridge. Its rifts notched the remote solar disc that glowered in stifled auburn through the drifting haze of golden sand.

'Hey, hey, Gokudera, look! It's—'

'I'm looking at it, you baseball freak! Quit nudging!' Then, he turned to Tsuna with the most courteous smile he could muster, 'Would you like to get your photo taken, tenth?'

'Huh? Oh … yes, please, Gokudera-kun.' The brunet fumbled for the mobile phone in his pocket and handed it to the boy sitting on his left.

The driver kindly slowed down his speed so that the photo wouldn't be blurred. After the van passed the multitude of meandering streams that cut through sandstone walls, the guide offered, 'That natural arch may be reached by boat, on foot, or on horseback. Our school's hiking club often arranges weekend trips there. Do feel free to join them.'

'Does Millefiore have a baseball club?'

'We sure do. And plenty more of sporting and non-sporting clubs besides.'

'What about boxing club?' asked Ryouhei.

'Yes, we have that, too.'

The part of the desert they were located at present was filled with ever-swirling sand-storms, through which they had to pass to reach the unmapped territory of Millefiore Academy. Like any other Vongola branch, the place was undetected by ordinary satellites and other human technology.

Given that the sandstorm affected the van no more than a breeze, the Namimori students assumed that this was some sort of talisman-protected barrier designated to allow exorcists to pass through and to ward off ordinary people. Behind the sandstorm, they were surprised as well as pleased to find a lush meadow bordered from the desert by an elevation of deeply eroded gneissic rocks. This was a fertile sedimentary flatland that was the alluvial flood plain of the Roslin River. At the far back, the Reynoldston Mountains of Pridmouth spun upwards into clouds of verdant rainforest. Through this enchanted setting, clear streams splashed and tumbled, cascading over travertine basins and into frothy pools.

In the middle row, Romario was searching for a spare vomit bag, since Lambo had used two of them earlier, while Ryouhei was patting the child's back; the afro-haired shape-shifter's carsickness didn't seem to get any better. At the back, Hibari slept through the buzzling conversations. On the opposite corner, Mukuro watched all other people in silence—a sentinel whose presence was easily forgettable. Dino, who sat between Hibari and Mukuro, could only hope that the boy on his right hand side would not wake up before they reached their destination; Hibari's foul mood due to all the crowding wasn't exactly an appropriate thing to show the Millefiore staff.

By the time their van arrived at the Millefiore Academy, a quarter of an hour later, the sun was already burning bright scarlet on the western horizon. The air was filled with the fresh scent of grass. Bumble bees fluttered about, undisturbed by the flight of white dandelion seed heads.

Like other branches, the Britannian Vongola Academy also took shape of an Italian castle, but its colour was an immaculate white rather than the variant shades of brown. It sat in a shelf sculpted into the mountain, standing on a steep eminence and looking out across the immense, unbroken patch of a hundred and eleven miles of sedgy savannah stretching north to the Gulf of Pont Nedd Fechan. Because of this location, the academy was blessed with the vista of the flatlands and serried ridges to the east as well as the runnelled mountain backdrop to the west.

As they promenaded by a large pond in the garden, the exchange students' attention went to the gazebo in the middle of the pond. Within the heptagonal enclosure of the white gazebo, two boys dropped scraps into the water. A sooty-black entity with pointed ears emerged and devoured the bits they had just thrown. At a glance, the creature looked like a dog, but that was before they saw its racoon-like hands and elongated tail, which was shaped like a human hand at the point.

'You've got an _ahuizotl_ here?' Gokudera's eyes sparkled; the boy had a flair for UFOs and ancient mysticisms. Had he been strolling alone with hands unoccupied with luggage, he would have darted to the step-stone bridge leading to the gazebo and petted the ahuizotl.

Hafsteinsdóttir, who now had a thin beard the colour of rust and the cheeks speckled with freckles, answered, 'Yes, but a tamed one. It doesn't drown people like its brothers and sisters tend to do. As you've just seen, students dump their clipped nails and milk teeth for its food.'

'Cool,' commented Yamamoto, 'Our pond in Japan is filled with _kappa_ and _mizuchi_.'

Gokudera cast the ahuizotl one last longing look before proceeding under the arched entryway, along with his companions.

A security camera installed at the corner of the barbican ceiling, hidden by both the raised portcullis and the sombreness of the unlit edifice, recorded the seven exchange students, their supervisor and the supervisor's assistant as they were passing in files.

A white-haired man in his mid-twenties eyed the monitor hungrily. 'Fu fu fu fu. They've come at last.'

'Here are the printed data of the exchange students, Byakuran-sama.' An auburn-haired man of similar age handed the headmaster a few sheets of paper.

'That took longer than expected, Shou-chan. Was infiltrating the Namimori network set up by Giannini _that_ hard?'

Irie Shouichi adjusted his spectacles and light reflected off their glass surface. For a fraction of second, he was tempted to say, 'You have no idea how many scripts I had to write to eke out my way into that virtual fortress—the septuple password encryption and firewalls were just the beginning, not to mention our network almost got hacked instead.' In the end, he resolved to a simple nod, but the headmaster's gaze had already been focused on the sheets in his hands.

'The Storm representation, Gokudera Hayato,' he began to read, 'nicknamed "The Smoking Bomb", is the son of a woman sired by the demon Agares. Inheriting his father's linguistic skills, Gokudera is proficient in thirty-five human languages and their dialect variations, fair in a hundred and eighty-seven languages and knows the basic of over three thousand languages—as far as the human languages are concerned. As for demonic languages, exorcists are still yet to find the method and the examiners to test such aptitude; hence, the exact number that this savant has mastered is currently impossible to tell. His weapons are iridium-based bombs and arrows. His familiar is a leopard.

Despite his human form, the Rain representation, Yamamoto Takeshi, was actually an _amefurikozou_ born from the union of a _suijin_ and an _ame-warashi_. In addition to being a water manipulator who can summon rain at will, he can also transform a bamboo _shinai_ into a ruthenium katana, and in such a circumstance, there is no earthly object he cannot slash. He is also notable for his exceptionally agile motoric ability. He possesses the unique ability of nurturing two familiars: a swallow and a dog.

Sasagawa Ryouhei, who represents the Sun element, was born to a mortal man by a naiad. A prodigious offspring that emerges once every few generation, his healing power far exceeds his mother's. Whenever he fights, he does it bare-handed. Were it not for the minimum age limit, his boxing skills would be more than enough to pass a featherweight professional boxing test. He has a kangaroo, also skilled in boxing, as a familiar.

The Thunder representation Lambo Bovino is the son of a _mamuthone_ and a _jana_. Inheriting both parents' shape-shifting abilities, he mainly appears as a five-year-old child in front of others. However, while cornered during battles, he can return to his fifteen-year-old self or even invoke the strength and wisdom of his twenty-five-year-old self by means of a tungsten time machine called the "Ten Years Bazooka". His familiar is a bull.

Hibari Kyouya of the Cloud division was born of human parents, but was bitten by a busaw at the age of seven and a draug by the age of eleven. With a multiplying hedgehog as his familiar, he is listed as one of the Namimori's top ten strongest students this decade. He had even single-handedly conquered an undead-turned A-class exorcist at the age of eleven. His weapons are a pair of tonfas that stored osmium misericordes in their upper compartments as well as spiked flails in their side compartments.

Rokudou Mukuro was born from the unhallowed union of a ghoul and a woman. He fights with a tantalum trident and his familiar is an owl. Having scored highest this century for the Mist placement exam, his illusory techniques are truly hard to dispel. To date, no opponent of his has survived without manipulated memory or damaged brain.

Representing the Sky division, Sawada Tsunayoshi descends from an illustrious lineage of human exorcists. Clad with titanium gloves, he has proven himself capable of handling A-rank opponents, although his true power tends to lay dormant unless he was in the state of emergency. His sky lion familiar is one of a kind that exists once every thousand years.

Fu fu fu. I'm looking forward to what these youngsters will show us.' With that, Byakuran laid the paper down. He then opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a bag of marshmallows. 'Especially…' Leaving his word to trail off, he popped a marshmallow in his mouth and chewed, but his eyes were fixed upon one particular sheet of paper, in which a fifteen-year-old boy with heterochromatic eyes and indigo hair was portrayed.

###

The guide had now taken the students to the dormitory. As a fellow Vongola property, the architectural differences between the American and Asian branches weren't too striking; for instance, the corridor here was fashioned with the cloister vault rather than with the cavetto vault as in the Namimori dormitory. What shocked all the seven exchange students was that the Millefiore dormitory was _not_ gender-segregated.

'Don't worry, there are two bathrooms in every bedroom—one for each gender, of course. In addition, every room consists of seven sets of beds, wardrobes, desks and other amenities; each for a different element. The most optimal team is made up of the storm, rain, thunder, sun, cloud, mist and sky exorcists, after all,' explained Hafsteinsdóttir as she opened the lock of a door bearing the plate '347'.

'This room lacks the sun element. Thus, it would be your room, Mr Sasagawa.' With that, she beckoned at the four-poster bed on the northeast corner. The other six canopy beds were presently vacant, but there were personal items, such as teddy bear, alarm clock or books, that became the tell-tale of their occupancy. 'Your roommates are still doing their respective extra-curricular activities at this hour, I'm afraid. Your combat uniform has been provided. It's free sized, so I think it can fit most teenagers.' Hafsteinsdóttir glanced at Lambo and quickly added, 'As for Mr Bovino, I'll have the uniform tailor-made afterwards.'

Ryouhei approached the bed and unfolded the said uniform. Although different in design from the Namimori uniform, it was also made of light-weighted, flameproof, waterproof and bulletproof synthetic fibres enchanted with dwarves' hair. 'Is there only one?'

Hafsteinsdóttir, who now appeared as a paunchy aged man, replied, 'Ah, yes, you only wear it during combat lessons, see. At any other times, you wear ordinary clothes. The freedom to express one's self is one of this country's doctrines. Students, therefore, are free to wear whatever they deem suitable for themselves, provided they don't dress provocatively.'

The guide escorted the rest of the students one by one, with Lambo last, because she needed to take his measurements for the uniform.

It was not until half an hour before dinner that Hibari met his roommates: the storm element bookworm named Armando Gutierrez—at a glance, he looked like a quiet boy, but one he talked, he nagged; the rain element garrulous girl named Hui Yu, who talked with Singaporean accent and ended nearly all of her sentences with the '–_lah_' particle; the thunder element Avishag Gitlis, whose build was so skinny that it made Mother Teresa's look like a gormandiser and whose Jewish origin was thickly proclaimed in every syllable she pronounced; the sun element optimistic girl of Tanzanian origin named Tulinagwe Chizimu; and the sky element tall boy with fiery-red hair called Vincent Turner.

The last one to arrive was a freckled Polish boy named Czcibor Wiśniewski, who exclaimed, 'Wow, Xanxus is _so_ cool!' as soon as he burst through the door, carrying the latest copy of the exorcists' monthly magazine,_ Purigatorio_. The glossy front cover featured a dead _fext_ being trampled by a scarred man approaching his mid-twenties under a large header saying: '_Exclusive Interview with the Leader of the Varia_'. Looking bedazzled still, Wiśniewski hummed, 'Oh man, I wish I could be just like Xanxus. I mean, sure he has one hell of a temper, but look at his strength…'—another reason to add why Hibari couldn't get along well with mist element exorcists.

Although these six Britannian roommates tried to be amiable, the antisocial Hibari spoke only when questioned and refused their dinner invitation right off the bat. He headed to the dining hall alone, ignoring the girls throwing a 'why do we get this freak as a roommate' look at one another behind his back. Only Turner, who had the patience as vast as the sky, tried to calm the rest. 'Well, maybe that's just his character. No harm's done.'

Despite being accustomed to international dishes, none of the exchange students could finish the huge portion of the American-standard meal. However, the computerised system appealed to Gokudera and Hibari's favours—the former being a technological geek and the latter being a sociopath who preferred pushing buttons to conversing with his fellow humans—even though Hibari would trouble himself approaching a more distant machine just so that he did not need to be a part of the crowd. From his seat, which was eight tables away from the other exchange students, he gave them a look of 'I can't be bothered going along with such foolishness.'

Yamamoto and Ryouhei spent several minutes trying to decipher the Roman alphabets, but since they were friendly enough, help soon came from their respective roommates. Lambo pushed the buttons as he pleased and caused a cascade of error messages. Needless to say, Mukuro, who simply watched from afar, sipped his lamb goulash quietly and indulged himself in pretending not to know them, opting for silence as he usually did.

It was not until then that Dino—who had only been acquainted with Tsuna and Hibari—realised a major problem. Only three out of seven exchange students were prone to socialising, but none was gifted with linguistic aptitude. Yamamoto smiled at everything his tablemates said without knowing exactly the words meant. At another table, Ryouhei confused lots of words due to the katakana pronunciation, such as 'cheese' would be articulated as '_chizu_', which had the exact pronunciation as the Japanese word for 'map'. At the next table, Lambo could overcome the language barrier, but his noisy and troublemaker attitude gained him little appreciation from his tablemates. Since Tsuna, who sat at a different table, got easily intimidated, Gokudera glared at everyone who tried to talk to Tsuna. Rokudou Mukuro made people forget that he was even there and his lack of presence, as well as his choice to sit at the farthest table, didn't help his socialization prospects. The worst of all was Hibari Kyouya, whose expression upon witnessing a group of three or more people was pugnacious at best.

The next morning, the seven Namimori exchange students stared, astonished by the difference of the lockers' size. While no conspicuous difference in width was present, the Japanese lockers were roughly a third the length of their American counterparts. The difference in locker size was probably due to the fact that they are used mainly for shoe storage. Once a student was in the school building, it was mandatory for them to replace their outdoor footwear with indoor shoes made of flexible canvas, known as '_uwabaki_'. The American school lockers, on the other hand, functioned as students' personal storage, with a wide variety of contents ranging from skateboards to textbooks.

The size difference did not only occur on the lockers. Upon entering the classroom, they were again surprised, but this time by the difference of classroom chairs. At Japanese schools, chairs were separated from desks, but here each individual chair was connected to its own desk with a single armrest extending from the side. Instead of the usual hook on the side, there was a wire rack underneath every chair to hold its occupant's schoolbag.

Nothing surprised the exchange students, however, more than the changing of classrooms. In Japan, it was the teachers who came from one class to another, but here, it was the students who needed to look for the biology classroom, history classroom, and so forth.

Constantly flawless in his academic studies, Gokudera was the only one among the seven exchange students who could answer the teachers' questions perfectly. Yamamoto and Ryouhei, encumbered by their lack of English comprehension, did not get their chance to shine until PE. Lambo and Tsuna were the types who didn't show their true strength unless they were in emergency situation, so they appeared to be ridiculously idiotic, and many Britannian students even wondered why these two had been chosen as exchange students in the first place. Hibari was as silent as a statue. Mukuro, as always, was doing an excellent job of making his presence unnoticed. As for Dino, popularity seemed to follow him no matter where he went; his fan club was formed on the same day he transferred.

Being in Britannia didn't mean being free from bullies, especially in Tsuna's case. When Hibari entered the toilet, a tall, dark-skinned boy with dreadlocks was pushing Tsuna's head down the toilet bowl and flushing it repeatedly. Gokudera was lying unconscious on the floor, covered in cuts and bruises, while three other boys kept kicking his backside. There was no scent of gunpowder, probably because the peace-loving Tsuna had forbidden him to employ his dynamites to fight against fellow exorcist when the gang had attacked them earlier—Gokudera, who abided by Tsuna's every word obeyed even at the cost of his fatal injuries.

'So, your guts extend only as far as attacking those herbivores?' remarked Hibari with an unfazed expression.

When the next student entered the washroom, three minutes later, he found a boy with dreadlocks, along with his lackeys, lying on the floor. Their injuries looked like those of prisoners who had just come out of a medieval torture chamber.

###

In lieu of on 5 April like the start of Japanese academic year, the Britannian one started on 1 September. To compensate their English deficiency, the exchange students started their third-year students of Exorcism Studies anew in spite of having gone through a few academic months in Japan. Even so, other than the genius Gokudera, nobody complained about it. They, who used to be the top students from their respective divisions back in Namimori, found the standard of students' abilities to be higher in Britannia. In Hibari's case, today's combat spar proved that.

In contrast to the open-air practice ground at Namimori, the one at Millefiore was inclined more towards a hall. Built of white limestone, the place looked well-nigh like a roofed coliseum, owing to the number of exits along its circular wall. Even the arena was filled with sand; however, unlike the regular desert sand, the sand was as white as the one on the beaches that earned the reputation as top tourist destinations. Of course, by now, it was no secret what the favourite colour of the Millefiore headmaster was. The main difference, in addition to the shading, was the deficiency of stone benches—or any bench at all; the austerity of the edifice was emphasised by its absence of furniture.

As the Cloud exorcists' specialties decreed, each combatant was to face multiple opponents. The combat instructor, Kikyo, divided the students into groups of five. Each group was to hold out a one-versus-four battle in turn. Hibari's name was called together with Jack Green, Eduardo Peralta, Miriam Harris and Alexander Zhang.

Being ten inches taller than his prospective victim, Zhang seemed nothing less than a heavy-lifting athlete. With the wild strength of a gorilla, he swung a pair of barbells towards Hibari's head. But as expected, Zhang faithfully represented the reign of brute force, not speed. As Hibari sidestepped effortlessly, he could even read the writing on one barbell: _750 lbs._

Harris, whose face was decorated with at least twenty piercings, cut Hibari's evasion route; her thin build contributed greatly to her unmatched nimbleness. Three knives swung at Hibari, for his attacker wielded them between her fingers as though they had been her own claws. When Hibari evaded to the left, three more knives from the attacker's other hand pursued him.

As Hibari dodged the next set of knives, a basketball hit the pit of his stomach. An unfamiliar pain infringed upon the Japanese boy's ribcage; after taking such a formidable blow, bile rose to his throat and his head was spinning. The ball was nothing ordinary; it was laced with condensed spiritual energy. It was a _weapon_.

And Hibari swore he would not let it catch him unaware a second time.

Rather than falling onto the ground, the ball returned to its owner, the way a stringed yoyo would. When Hibari looked up, the ball was already resting on Peralta's palm. This fellow seemed nothing more than a sport-loving boy with an oversized cap, loose T-shirt, baggy shorts and worn-out sneakers. However, out of these three, he emitted the most hazardous aura. The fourth opponent still had not launched any attack yet, but Hibari had no luxury to ponder why.

Zhang swung the barbells at Hibari again, but the skylark somersaulted over Harris' head, kicking off her shoulder from behind and sending her crashing to Zhang, knocking them both down temporarily.

When Hibari spun around, Peralta, had sent his basketball back at the Japanese student. Coating his fist with spiritual energy, Hibari punched the ball. Even prepared for the assault, his knuckles felt numb—no student in Namimori had ever attacked him with such an immense power.

The ball hit the attacker straight on the face, but Peralta managed to pull out a last minute defence measurement that reduced the fatality of the effect. Wincing in pain, he aggressed forward, dribbling his ball in a mad pace to reassail Hibari. His adversary, however, was faster and evaded him. Hibari knocked the Latino boy down with a single chop to the nerves in his neck connecting to his spine before he could reach for the orange ball again. Temporally paralyzed, the basketball player collapsed.

Swerving to face Green, Hibari quickened his steps and threw himself into a new attack. He ran straight towards the dark-skinned boy with his arms stretched out, but when he was a metre away from the other boy, his feet—no, his entire body—was no longer on the ground. Vascular plants had appeared from the ceiling and twisted their snakelike tendrils around his wrists, binding him. His feet were at his usual eye level now, and the more Hibari struggled to pull the plant off him, the tighter the plant squeezed.

_These plants require high concentration to summon and time to grow,_ surmised Hibari._ So, this is why he didn't attack me sooner._

Hibari jolted as he felt his spiritual energy being drained from his body—was this the plants' doing? In front of him, Green leered at him, confident of an easy victory. Behind him, the other three students were advancing, suddenly hurtling forward from three different angles with deadly speed.

_These plants are laced with rain element_, deduced Hibari as he probed the type of spiritual energy that flowed within the plant. While it was uncommon, there were exorcists who could control two or more elements; his own teacher at Namimori, Lal Mirch, for instance, possessed the Rain, Cloud and Mist elements.

When the three assailants were inches away from his suspended body, Hibari kicked the first object that went his way: the basketball. Instead of aiming at its owner, he directed the ball towards the nearest opponent. Harris was nimble enough to duck, but before she could react by throwing her knives, Hibari's second kick had hit her square in the jaw.

Zhang, who had seen how Hibari treated his fellow, anticipated a similar third kick. As soon as Hibari's leg swept through the air, he caught it by the ball of the foot. With the inhuman strength inherited from his golem grandfather, he twisted Hibari's ankle. The assaulter tightened his grip upon hearing no scream from his victim—screw the supposed spar; he'd break the Japanese boy's bones and be punished with detention afterwards if he had to, but he _would_ definitely make this scoundrel scream and beg.

'Yo, Mir, he'll make a great punching bag, don'tcha think?' Peralta retrieved his ball and aimed at Hibari's head. 'Still too short for a basketball hoop, though.'

Harris sneered. 'His head's yours, but his belly's mine.' With that, she began the first of her series of enraged punches, since Hibari cast her the bored look of 'I've experienced worse.'

After receiving her fists just for the sake of measuring his opponent's strength, Hibari began to fight back, ferociously trading blows with his quartet of assailants no matter the speed at which their attacks came. Each time one of the opponents tried to go around the other to strike him from behind, he'd turn around and foil the attack. Hibari had even managed to free his right hand from the vascular snare.

'Holy shit!' To Green's astonishment, the vine that had bound Hibari's right wrist until a few minutes ago had now withered. 'How?!'

Hibari did not answer until he slogged Zhang's head with his tonfa, making the latter stagger back and collapse. 'Ever heard of reversed cloud seeding? '

Green's eyes widened in shock. Theoretically, the reason for the withering of his vine was dehydration—the cloud-element exorcist prevented his rain spiritual element from nurturing the plant. However, to achieve such a goal by applying the principle of reversed cloud seeding meant that this Japanese boy possessed an incredible control of his own spiritual energy so as to assemble the salt, potassium and carbon within his body and merge them with silver from his weapon—since each exorcist's weapon was coated with a minimum of five per cent silver as a precaution against vampires and werewolves—to form substances as close as possible to silver iodide, then used them to delay the rainfall. More impressively, he did it under the abuse from the three oppositions. How could such an individual with unparalleled accuracy of self-control exist?

By the time he mentally slapped himself and got ready for a fight, Hibari was in the middle of freeing himself from the remaining vine on his left wrist, while the other three students were incapacitated due to injuries. Before his opponent broke free completely, Green had taken the advantage and rushed to renew the assault, a war hammer in hand.

But reality turned out to be different from plan. The Japanese fighter's charges were too quick for Green, legs out to kick the native whichever way the dark-skinned student tried to dodge. When one of Hibari's kicks landed on his chin, the tied up boy used it as a springboard and, swinging in mid-air, he kicked Green hard enough to smash against the wall. The combat instructor looked his way just as Hibari had managed to extricate himself from the final entanglement of Green's vine.

Upon seeing the beat up Britannian students, the teacher calmly analysed the situation with a penetrating gaze from his sea-green eyes. 'Well, well, well,' the Head of Cloud Division remarked, 'I must make a note not to give you the first turn next time, skylark boy. You may be excused for now; be sure to ask the school medic to smear some diclofenac gel on your twisted ankle.' _O-ho, _a growing interest sparked within Kikyo's mind,_ I don't deny it; this boy … he's taciturn, he's psychopathic, he's brutal; but there's something in him that exceeds my anticipation._

On the second week of Hibari's stay at Millefiore, a medical check-up was carried out throughout the school. Rather than in April, like in non-exorcism schools, the check-up was held in September, on the second week after the term commenced. In addition to the standard health records, the students were also measured for their spiritual capabilities. The range of Hibari's sense of hearing and smell, with the draugen-busaw mode on, now improved to 857 metres.

As many days passed, it never occurred to the exchange students that they would eventually be assigned a mission directly from royalty on the few remaining days of their stay in Britannia.

###

'Bad news. We've got a call from Mynydd-y-Gaer regarding another wendigo attack, just now,' announced Bluebell, the head of the Rain Division. The phone receiver was still in her hand, and the air in the staff room grew even stiffer.

Torikabuto of the Mist division protested. 'Again? Didn't Alderley Edge also call five minutes ago with the same problem? And Nether Wallop before that? And Dinas Emrys?'

'That makes it the twelfth infected area today. The wendigo viruses have spread throughout the American continent and the prime minister's timing couldn't be more impeccable,' remarked Byakuran, with his chin on his knotted hands.

'What do you mean?' asked Daisy of the Sun Division.

Byakuran replied without any elaboration. 'Schneizel rang for an exorcism request.'

'Idjit, now of all times?' groaned Zakuro of the Storm Division. The other heads of departments looked at Byakuran in exasperation. They were going to need as many exorcists as they could get to fight the wendigos. Moreover, there was no time to organise a team with fully prepared strategy for the exorcism at the palace.

The white-haired Millefiore headmaster glanced at the glorious morning sky—the bright rays of the sun were pouring through the gaps between the gallant parade of clouds, unperturbed by the mundane troubles of mankind below—and took a rather deep breath before announcing, 'Dino Cavallone will lead the exchange students to attend the prime minister's summon. The Thunder Division personnel will create as much FGV as possible. All other available units will neutralise the infected areas nationwide and be prepared to fight the wendigos.'

Soon, the school ground became bustling with myriads of vehicles, from the smallest motorcycle to the largest aeroplane. The Namimori group took an enchanted van southwards to the capital city, Pendragon. A little less than two hours later, they arrived at the Britannian imperial palace—the third highest building in the world. Embracing the fusion of Regency and Beaux-Arts architectural styles, the palace was the pinnacle of elegance that reigned over the far-stretching verdant land at the very heart of the city.

After confirming the prime minister's invitation, the guards at the gilded iron-wrought gates let them through and the royal chamberlain greeted them the moment they dismounted from the van. 'This way, gentlemen,' the chamberlain cleared his throat and adjusted his lorgnette, holding the golden-rimmed glasses by their long handle, as he proceeded to escort the exorcists.

The group were passing the third pilaster in the vestibule when they perceived an earthquake from below. The ground shook, causing the rows of ornamental medieval knight armours and wall-mounted torchères to rattle. A passing footman carrying drinks gripped his tray fiercely to steady it, but the wine had already spilled from the glasses, sullying the tawny carpet.

All of a sudden, amidst the grandeur of the palace interior, some high-pitched cries pierced the air. The exorcists poured into the next room, which turned out to be a hall no less commodious than two and a half football fields combined. There, the empress, together with the internationally renowned hero—Zero—as well as the Britannian prime minister, was seeing off the Japanese prime minister, Ougi Kaname, at the end of his diplomatic visit. Judging by paleness of their faces, it was likely that the court ladies who attended the empress were the ones who had screamed.

The grand chandelier at the centre of the ceiling swayed so violently that even invoked a shower of debris. Without hesitation, Zero leapt to the Britannian prime minister's side, shielding the second prince from harm. It lasted less than a minute, yet within those countable seconds, something within Kururugi Suzaku told him that he had lived for this very moment: Schneizel was here, with so little distance between their two wildly beating hearts. As Zero, he had vowed to live without personal happiness; as a human, there was nothing he could do to prevent this rising excitement.

Then, the seism was over as quickly as it had begun, and everything returned to the state of attentive immobility. Everyone's laboured breathing still reverberated in the hall but no real damage was done. Zero resumed his place next to the empress. Yet, he felt a jerking motion when he held the young girl's wheelchair. She fidgeted from him. _Betrayed_.

Seeing Nunnally recoil, a dreadful realisation hit Suzaku: None of those who were present had been blind enough not to notice that Zero placed the prime minister's life above the empress'.

'_I didn't mean…' _Suzaku tried to say, but a sense of guilt scorched his tongue and prevented the articulation of those words. So what if his body had reacted on its own, even before the motoric gears in his brain commanded the motion? The fact remained that he broke his promise to protect Nunnally. He bit his lip behind his mask of bulletproof glass. _Lelouch, I'm sorry._

Once, he had been at peace whenever he was at Princess Euphemia's side and vowed to protect her with his life. Once, he had delivered the final blow of the so-called 'Zero Requiem' operation by tainting his own hands with the blood of Prince Lelouch whom he treasured above all else and detested most in the world. Yet, there had been a roiling fascination that had haunted him for months now when he discerned the debonair second prince of the Holy Britannian Empire solved problems no less smoothly than his chess games, pacified the House of Lords and the Senate equally, handled the most rebellious of terrorists, and even won the national and international favours. The unbidden admiration grew into an indissoluble emotion, burgeoning inside Suzaku, eating away at his sanity because he was aware that he felt what _shouldn't _be.

And now, he was a moth drawn to the deadly attraction of a flame.

Unbeknownst to him, underneath a mask of composure, Schneizel el Britannia was smiling at heart: the indwelling sentiment inside him might not end up one-sided, after all.

Meanwhile, the exorcists headed to the elevator at the end of the hall. Before the door closed, Ryouhei cast the last glance at the empress; it was hard to believe that the most prosperous country in the world was led by such a frail maiden condemned to a wheelchair. The realization that the girl looked to be about his sister's age only made his disbelief stronger.

The elevator opened onto a wide parquet corridor leading to the sixty-third prince's private chamber. This was the Hall of Portraits, where many a man with chin curtain beard and many a woman with fontange high headdress peered down at the exorcists-in-training from their respective gilded frames.

'Enter.' The answer came from the other side of the filigree-embellished door after the chamberlain rapped the _fleur-de-lis _knocker. It was a child's voice that sounded strangely distant, as though he were located at the far end of a classroom.

The chamberlain opened the door to reveal something that eclipsed even the presidential suite of a five-star hotel. The room was sumptuously bedecked with gold leaf flourished antique furniture and scores of paintings and sculptures, each of which worth more than the lifetime income of an ordinary salaryman. Lavish draperies, cherry-wood panelling and crystal chandeliers created an exquisite setting. The imposing iron-cast columns and neo-gothic windows added an irresistible charm to the reception room, not to mention that it also offered access to a marble-balustraded balcony overlooking the intricate maze of the Exelica Garden. On its left, the lounge was connected to three adjoining rooms: the bedroom, the study room and the bathroom.

A papillon dog with white and brown coat ran towards the guests as they came in, barking noisily, until a boy's voice—the same voice as the one who invited them in—told the dog off. 'No, Lucien, leave them be!'

This voice came from the adjoining study, so the exorcists guessed that it was the prince's. The chamberlain bade them to take a seat and wait, while he informed the prince of their arrival. As soon as he was gone, Yamamoto made an attempt to pet Lucien, but Gokudera forbade him to touch anything in that room. Meanwhile, Lambo, who glanced impishly at the huge wall-sunken plasma TV set opposite the sofas, grabbed the remote control and squealed, 'Let's see how many channels this thingy has!'

'Lambo, don't; we'll be disturbing the prince!' In his attempt to seize the remote from the capricious child, Tsuna accidentally pushed the volume button and the sound from the television boomed across the room.

By the time Tsuna managed to turn it off, the chamberlain had reappeared from the adjoining study room, bearing a look of disbelief that such a country bumpkin existed. As Tsuna apologised over and over with a beet-red face, Gokudera grabbed Lambo's head and made him bow. 'You too, apologise!'

'Wha—but it's not Lambo-san's fault that the volume got louder.'

'Just apologise!' Gokudera smacked his head.

Lambo sniffled a tear and mumbled the word 'endure' to himself before apologising.

'His Highness Prince Calbraith pi Britannia will finish his Latin lesson in ten minutes. Refreshments will be provided in the meantime,' said the chamberlain before excusing himself.

Barely five minutes had passed when the door swung open again—this time, revealing a chambermaid in frilly apron carrying a trolley laden with a tea set made of finest porcelain and a large quintuple-tiered tray of bite-sized sweet and savoury pastries. Instead of barking, the dog eyed her quietly.

The maid had not even closed the door when Lambo climbed the closest _tabouret_ to the trolley to grab several pieces, starting from the nearest blueberry-lavender dacquoise, and declared, 'Wow, Lambo-san wants this and this and this and—'

'Lambo, stop being so greedy! You can have seconds when you're done with the one in your mouth.'

'No way! Lambo-san wants—'

A light chuckle put an end to their argument. The prince was walking past the doorway, followed by an elderly woman of middle height with a bouffant hairstyle who could only be his tutor. He was a boy of no older than thirteen, with lime green eyes, aquiline nose and very thin lips. Add a pair of glasses and he would pass for a typical geek. Yet, there was something about him that distinguished him from the average teenagers at school—his princely aura for one reason, and his eloquently flowing accent for another.

When Tsuna apologised again with a pronounced blush on each cheek, the young prince assured him that he found them quite entertaining, since no one else had ever behaved the way they did. He joined them for tea right after the tutor curtsied and left the room.

'He's exceptionally well-trained, isn't he?' remarked Yamamoto shortly after both parties had introduced themselves, pointing at the prince's little dog. All the while, Lucien did not even wag its tail at the prospect of a delicious treat from such a feast.

'Yes, Lucien has been instructed to sit nicely and eat only the food served in his plate at certain hours on a regular basis.' Even as he spoke, the exorcists realised the difference in the prince's tone. The cheerful disposition vanished from his face; no longer did he look like a nonchalant teenager, but a young prince with dignity who was accustomed to having anything at his behest. 'He arrived here only yesterday. As a matter of fact, it was actually because of the same matter that requires your presence that I asked for a dog as my constant companion.' There was a sharp intake of breath before he continued, 'I used to believe that there were no such things as ghosts until recently.'

The guests' attention was fully focused on Prince Calbraith now, each exorcist bearing wordless questions in his gaze.

After sipping his tea, the young prince spoke in a grave, finely modulated voice, 'You have been made aware of the nature of my brother's—the prime minister's—invitation, I trust.'

'Yes, Sir,' answered Dino. They had exchanged greetings earlier and according to the common etiquette, the title 'Your Highness' should be used only for the first time addressing a prince, and 'Sir' thereafter. Nevertheless, in the other exorcists' ears, the calling of a child with 'Sir' did sound awkward.

'In that case, I shall give you the full account of what has transpired…' The prince's voice trailed off. For a while, he immersed himself in quietude, pondering how much truth he should confide to provide the exorcists with the crucial information without demeaning his courage. In his mind rang the voice of his wizened governess while quoting a gentleman's qualities from an old etiquette book, '_He is brave, because, with a conscience void of offence, he has nothing to fear. He opposes without bitterness and yields without admitting defeat. He is never arrogant, never weak._'

###

Two nights ago, Calbraith woke up to use the bathroom around one a.m. While he was washing his hands, however, he was perturbed by an ominous presage of something unnatural. Even through his drowsiness, a feeling was rising, _creeping,_ from the hollow of his stomach and spreading outwards—a gradual sensory frosting of sinews and nerve lines, seeping through to his skin, prickling its surface with tiny bumps. A bewilderment of fright took possession of him and bathed his temple with cold sweat. His heart pounded so fast and so loud for a cause he did not even cognise. There was a dreadful churning pressure all around him and a small voice inside his head telling him that an unpleasant occurrence was about to befall.

The prince tried to convince the rational part of his mind that all he felt was utterly preposterous. Yet, after the last of the water gurgled away in the basin, the air became strangely still and this silence was cumbersome. He discerned a strong, unholy aura tinged with the shadowy terror. Stealthily, it expanded, reaching towards him like phantasmal claws. The entire manifestation was extremely tenuous, and might well have been a hallucination; and yet, it sent him shuddering nonetheless.

Calbraith reached the bathroom door with his back pricking and had to wipe his hand on his pyjama before he could make the door handle turn. Even so, his grip was tenuous, skidding over the smooth surface before lodging and turning. For a brief moment, the door resisted his effort, as if someone had been clutching the other side. Then the handle was caught and the door could be opened. He pushed inwards and, as the light of the bathroom spilled into the sombre bedroom, the child perceived that someone really did stand before him, forestalling his endeavour to return to bed.

In addition to the stranger's primitive garb, its lineaments bespoke the possession of a Mesoamerican origin. It was a little under medium height, with a pair of small, intricately convoluted ears and the exotic moulding of the nostrils, but its bare feet did not touch the ground. Its person was translucent and cloaked with eerie phosphorescence—visible, but without tangibility. Its scalp was almost bare, with only long single strands of black hair hanging in wisps. A part of its mouth had been ripped away, exposing its dark gums and an elongated blood-red tongue that dangled between its teeth.

The stranger licked its short, deeply curved lips the moment it caught sight of the prince, just as a hungry jaguar at the sight of a cub. One of the dreadful entity's hands was outstretched, reaching for Calbraith with black nails and swollen fingers that never fumbled. Tremor seized the core of the boy's soul. He could not scream; he could not run away; he could not even move a muscle. All the young prince could do was staring at this horrendous being. Nonetheless, the entity's finger pointed at the centre of the study room, singling it out in a crowd of lifeless furniture.

Upon perceiving that the creature's hand did nothing to capture him, Calbraith inquired with one remaining vestige of courage as to what the ghost meant. It offered him no answer.

It was only then did the young prince look deeply into its eyes, of which unblinking stare glowed dauntingly like burning coals and blazed with lurid vermillion flames that were preternaturally placid—never replenished yet unwavering throughout an inanimate timelessness of which days were in no wise different from its nights. It gave him a long, unreadable look—glowering at him still, still … _still_.

Calbraith's mouth contorted into a frightened rictus. The interminable gaze took the child to the height of a new terror; it sent the blood hissing and tingling through his veins. How could he know that he was not drifting on a nightmarish tide of madness?

The young prince recited the Lord's Prayer in his heart. On the third recitation, the apparition began to shrink with great swiftness and vanished into night's caliginous realm in a swirl of gloom, disappearing so rapidly that Calbraith could no longer make out its outlines. Only his pounding heart testified that the evanescent entity had indeed existed. He wiped his forehead, while his legs were still shaking beneath him. Even so, fear gnawed on him no less persistently than a dog on a bone ever since then.

###

The prince took a deep breath and mentally rearranged the words so that his account sounded decent. At the end of his tale, Ryouhei, Yamamoto and Tsuna were still struggling to weave together Calbraith's words in their minds. Unaccustomed to the prince's speaking style, these foreign students could only understand his words in bits and pieces. Gokudera, on the other hand, ventured to enquire, 'Why the study room, Sir?'

'I presume because, at that time, it was the temporarily lodging for the artefact procured from the Drumelzier Sea. Last weekend, my friends and I engaged ourselves in the leisurely pastime of scuba diving. My diving instructor is the one who discovered the artefact and we helped him pull it from the seafloor.

I had an appraiser estimate its value afterwards; however, peculiar as it may sound, he insisted on quitting halfway, albeit such deportment did not augur well for an expertise of his calibre. You would naturally be inclined to think that a professional is fully capable of cognising whether an object is beyond his capacity on the onset of the observance. Furthermore, he wore a superlatively timorous expression right before he announced his withdrawal from the project—it was a mystery so salient that it could hardly fail to provoke curiosity. Hereafter, I am thus left with no clue for the true cause that prompted his fear and could only guess that this might be something too outré to be mentioned even in a tale.' Calbraith let out a small sigh.

Tsuna, Yamamoto and Ryouhei blinked in confusion; they had to struggle to get the gist of the day-to-day lessons at Millefiore for the last eleven weeks, but even with their current level of improved English comprehension, they could grasp merely well-nigh half of Calbraith's speech.

'At any rate, I still have the recording of the appraisal in my possession. Allow me to show you.' The prince rose from his seat and headed back to his study, only to return a minute later with a sleek white laptop. During the prince's temporary absence, Gokudera translated the summary of Calbraith's story into Japanese for Tsuna, Yamamoto and Ryouhei's benefit.

After stationing the computer on the coffee table, Calbraith opened a video file. The opening scene of the video showed the exact lounge they were in, with the number of teacups as the only difference. A man in late fifties with brow of uncorrugated ivory and handlebar moustache introduced his name, his current occupation, the university from which he had graduated and some examples of the famous objects he had previously appraised prior to scrutinising the artefact in question.

At first, the appraising process seemed nothing out of ordinary. The appraiser lifted the artefact with greatest care and asked the prince's permission to clean it. The object assumed the form of a jar, with a tapering neck and an orotund body; not only was it festooned with seaweeds, but it was also encrusted with corals and shells that had gathered upon it through aeons in the ocean deeps.

There was a transitional effect, and then the next scene displayed the cleaned jar. The appraiser pointed at the bas-relief carving that covered the entire belly of the earthenware, explicating that flora and fauna were common subjects in Mesoamerican art. He alleged that the vase belonged to the Olmec civilisation instead of Maya, despite the iconographic analogies between the two cultures, and spent fifteen minutes delineating the differences between them. When he mentioned about the absence of cocoa pod carving in contrast to the diversity of other crops, Yamamoto stifled a yawn, Ryouhei rubbed his eyes, Tsuna looked lost, Lambo was plainly disinterested from the start, Hibari and Mukuro kept watching with poker faces; only Gokudera's expression showed unwavering concentration.

'If we look at the crude cut of its rim…' asserted the appraiser as he craned his neck and peeped inside the narrow neck of the vase with the aid of torchlight illumination, '… we can see—'

The appraiser's hazel eyes dilated and his Adam's apple bobbed once. He retracted himself with such haste too questionable to be regarded as natural before saying, 'I am sorry, Sir. It would seem that I am not a suitable person to deem the worth of this artefact.' With that, the video file ended.

'Naturally, I inspected what was inside the jar myself later, yet discovered nothing save for the soot-black darkness,' affirmed Prince Calbraith, 'Then, I left it in my study that night, with a mind to contact an archaeological research institute the next morning, but then the ghost appeared before me.'

'Where is the jar now, Sir?' asked Dino.

'I keep it sealed in the second room to the left of the elevator, three floors below. Two sentries guard the door from the outside.'

'Sir,' Gokudera intoned, 'May I watch the video again?'

'By all means.' The prince handed the laptop.

While Gokudera was pausing and zooming the video, Dino began to assign the tasks to his students, 'Bovino, who specialises in artefacts, will take a closer look at—' Dino paused and scanned his students. 'Speaking of whom, where is Bovino?'

'I'm here,' answered Lambo while appearing from the bathroom, the tip of a forked stick protruding from his pocket. Jocosity vanished from the timbre of his voice—when Lambo stopped referring himself as 'Lambo-san', it meant his serious mode was switched on. 'I dowsed the bathroom. Just as I thought, it's all right. There's no bone buried in the floor or something like that, so the ghost did not choose that location for a particular reason.'

The prince gazed at him in undisguised wonder; it was hard to believe that this was the same noisy child who had played prank with the TV set just a while ago.

'Right,' Dino stated, 'As I was saying, Sasagawa will watch Bovino's back while the latter is examining the artefact.'

Suddenly, Gokudera spoke, 'The inscription on the neck of the jar says: "A fate worse than death awaits whomever disturbs the peace of he-whose-name-is-unspeakable."

'You can read Olmec iconography?' remarked the prince, who found it even harder to believe.

'That explains it,' inferred Ryouhei, 'Perhaps the appraiser was worried that something bad would happen to him … something like the Curse of Tutankhamun.'

'No, I doubt that is the case,' replied the prince, 'Unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphs, a vast number of the Olmec symbols remain indecipherable heretofore. Suppose the appraiser had been well-armed with the archaeological knowledge to read the inscription, he would have mentioned it earlier, rather than focusing his inspection on the carvings. Furthermore, what triggered his fright seemed to come from the inside of the vase, in lieu of the neck.'

Dino asked, 'Has anything else happened since the disappearance of the ghost?'

In lieu of answering straightaway, Calbraith took a deep breath. Words did not come out of his mouth until five seconds had lapsed. 'There is no indication that these are still related to the aforementioned artefact, but starting from yesterday, a series of unnatural occurrences took place every few hours, like, all the windows on the east side of the palace shattered around three p.m. yesterday, or the chairs in the conference room flew about at seven p.m., or the lamps on the fourth floor flickered at nine p.m. … although none of these was as serious as the clanging of the prisoners' iron bars at four a.m. Neither the warden nor the prisoners was near the bars at that time; hence, judging from the sound, they were convinced that invisible hands hit those bars with a metal pipe. At last, but not least, there was also the temblor that befell only this palace just a few minutes ago.'

'Hmm, that does sound more like poltergeists' works than ghosts'. Or it could be the orchestration of a psychokinetic user. In the worst-case scenario, there's more than one enemy,' asserted Dino. 'We should split up and look for those responsible. Tsuna, you patrol the east side of the palace. Rokudou, you take the south. Kyouya will take the west, and I, north. Gokudera and Yamamoto will stay here to protect His Highness Prince Calbraith in precaution for the ghost's return.'

Searching his bag, Dino took out eight small transceivers and a radar device. He handed an earpiece-shaped transceiver to each of the seven students. 'Here, clip these behind your ears.'

Next, he turned to his trusted subordinate and handed him the spiritual radar. The device was built to detect spiritual energy in a radial pattern for up to a mile away, so its watcher was able to warn others of any spiritual presence. 'Romario, please monitor the situation with this; you know how to contact us if danger arises.'

The man-disguised goblin nodded and took the radar. Lambo and Ryouhei had no problem executing Dino's instruction. Yamamoto even accepted his lot with a happy face. While everyone else took their assignments in stride, Gokudera grumbled about why he didn't get assigned Tenth as a partner.

Tsuna himself was wondering why Dino called Hibari by his given name. The aguano always used family names whilst addressing all other students who were not from the Sky Division. So, why 'Kyouya', never 'Hibari'?

With assignments taken, the exorcists headed out, going their separate ways. They had enemy to kill. Eventide fell upon the palace, not with serenity but with the threat of bloodshed.

TO BE CONTINUED

* * *

Chapter V will be released on 31 October because it contains 'treats' suitable for Halloween.

ETA: It turns out that my other fics have consumed my time more than expected, so the update for Chapter V will be delayed. Sorry about this. On the bright side, there'll be a double (or triple) release this Halloween: a Takano x Ritsu Sekaiichi Hatsukoi horror and a Xanxus x Squalo humour (in two versions).


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